Price matching and platform pricing

Anna Bottasso, Paolo Marocco and Simone Robbiano

MPRA Paper from University Library of Munich, Germany

Abstract: In this study we investigate the effects of Price Matching Guarantees (PMGs) commercial policies on U.S. online consumer electronics daily prices. By applying a Diff-in-Diff identification strategy we find evidence in favor of price reductions occurring after the PMG policy is repealed. We further investigate if such effect is heterogeneous according to products characteristics, by exploiting User Generated Contents (UGCs, as products popularity and quality) and online search visibility measures (Google Search Rank). Estimates suggest that for high quality (visibility) products PMGs policies harms competition by keeping prices high, while for low quality (visibility) products, prices decrease during the policy validity period.

Keywords: online platforms; price matching guarantees; platform pricing; user generated contents; policy evaluation; counterfactual evaluation (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: L00 L10 L11 L41 L81 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2020-10
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-com, nep-ind, nep-pay and nep-reg
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
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https://mpra.ub.uni-muenchen.de/104811/1/MPRA_paper_104811.pdf original version (application/pdf)
https://mpra.ub.uni-muenchen.de/106387/1/MPRA_paper_106387.pdf revised version (application/pdf)
https://mpra.ub.uni-muenchen.de/112804/1/MPRA_paper_106387.pdf revised version (application/pdf)
https://mpra.ub.uni-muenchen.de/112804/8/MPRA_paper_112804.pdf revised version (application/pdf)

Related works:
Working Paper: Price matching and platform pricing (2022)
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