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Lecture 2(C) Price Discriminaton. Price Discrimination: The Easy Questions. What is it? Charging Different Prices for the Same Good Why do firms do it? To reduce the lost revenue that would result if the price cut was offered to the customers who were willing to pay the higher price.
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Price Discrimination: The Easy Questions • What is it? • Charging Different Prices for the Same Good • Why do firms do it? • To reduce the lost revenue that would result if the price cut was offered to the customers who were willing to pay the higher price. • Who gets discriminated against? • Those customers willing to pay the higher price (i.e., the “low elasticity buyers”
The Hard Question: Why Do Firms Discriminate in Ways That are Seemingly Counter to Other Interests? • Airline Pricing: Lower prices to weekend travelers. • “Entrance fees” • Coupons • Expensive differentiation (Escalades v Suburban sx v dx chips)?
To Be a Successful Price Discriminator, The Firm Should • Have some degree of market power. • Be able to segregate customers according to willingness to pay. • Be able to prevent arbitrage.
Perfect Discrimination and Consumer Surplus • Consumer Surplus: The difference between what you’re willing to pay and what you have to pay. • Price discrimination can be thought of as an attempt to extract more of the consumer surplus
An Example Spending = 3x3=$9, and so what is the surplus? If P=$3, how many would you buy? Q=3, and so what would you spend? Surplus=12-9=3
Consumer Surplus and Optimal 2-Part Pricing • A “2-part” pricing scheme is one where the customer must pay a fixed fee (“entrance fee”) for the right to buy the good at some price. • Club charge at Sam’s • Cover charge at a nightclub • Connect fee for electricity • In class we’ll build a model of 2-part pricing and show that the optimal scheme is one where • The good is sold at marginal cost • The entrance fee is set at a level such that the customer pays over the entire consumer surplus.
If you understand what is meant by consumer surplus, you understand that the ideal scheme of discrimination (ideal from the point of the seller) is to engage extract all possible surplus. • This is often what “salesmanship” is all about. • It also explains why “take-it-or-leave-it” may be an effective strategy. • Interestingly, in cases of bilateral monopoly (both sides can only deal with the other) or near bilateral monopoly, the entire negotiation is about surplus and small differences in bargaining power make for big differences in outcomes. • (Why did the dominant pitcher of the 1960’s,Bob Gibson, never make more than $150 k, while Roger Clements makes almost $20 million?)
Bundling and Price Discrimination • “Bundling” is the requirement that a customer buy a fixed basket of the goods, rather than buy only what is wanted. • In some cases, this is just to eliminate the cost of negotiating over every detail • But in other cases, this would seem counter productive—after all, in most markets, the firm’s interests are best served by giving the customer what they want.
An Example: Suppose the following represents the maximum amount each movie theater would pay for each movie
If the producer could discriminate, TR = $32 • But what if the producer doesn’t know the local market • Charging $10 per movie yields only $20 • Charging $6 per movie yields only $24 • Charging $16 for the bundle yields $32
