How Consumer Information Curtails Market Power in the Funeral Industry

Thierry Blayac, Patrice Bougette and Christian Montet

Working Papers from LAMETA, Universtiy of Montpellier

Abstract: The purpose of this article is to show, based on the case of the French market, that consumer perception of different funeral service offers, along with new entry in a special storing facility service (“chambre funéraire”), can be sufficient to impose competitive pressures on the various suppliers, including the former monopolist. With a discrete choice experiment implemented in Lyon, France, we find evidence that, contrary to widely shared beliefs about this specific market, demand for funeral services seems characterized by relatively high price elasticities, at least as soon as consumers are fully informed about the opportunities open to them in this market. Consumer behavior has actually changed in favor of a better assessment of the different possibilities of services supplied and of their relative price. We then implement simulations in local markets and show that, with good consumer information, the market power of the supposedly dominant firm is much less important than it is generally believed. Furthermore, simulations stress the procompetitive effects of setting up a new storing facility by any businesses. We finally show that, if some improvements can still be brought to the functioning of this market, they should come from a better regulation of consumer information and of the entry of firms.

Pages: 30 pages
Date: 2012-04, Revised 2012-04
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-com and nep-mkt
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.lameta.univ-montp1.fr/Documents/DR2012-12.pdf First version, 2012 (application/pdf)
Our link check indicates that this URL is bad, the error code is: 500 Can't connect to www.lameta.univ-montp1.fr:80 (No such host is known. )

Related works:
Journal Article: How consumer information curtails market power in the funeral industry (2014)
Working Paper: How Consumer Information Curtails Market Power in the Funeral Industry (2014)
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:lam:wpaper:12-12

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Working Papers from LAMETA, Universtiy of Montpellier Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Patricia Modat ( this e-mail address is bad, please contact ).