Discriminating Against Captive Customers

Mark Armstrong and John Vickers

No 858, Economics Series Working Papers from University of Oxford, Department of Economics

Abstract: Mark Armstrong, John Vickers We analyze a market where some consumers only consider buying from a specific seller while other consumers choose the best deal from several sellers. When sellers are able to discriminate against their captive customers, we show that discrimination harms consumers in aggregate relative to the situation with uniform pricing when sellers are approximately symmetric, while the practice tends to benefit consumers in sufficiently asymmetric markets.

JEL-codes: D43 D8 L13 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2018-10-11
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-com, nep-mic, nep-mkt and nep-ore
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (6)

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Related works:
Journal Article: Discriminating against Captive Customers (2019)
Working Paper: Discriminating Against Captive Customers (2018)
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