Group purchasing, nonlinear tariffs, and oligopoly

Group Purchasing , Nonlinear Tariffs , and Oligopoly By Howard P . Marvel

Loyalty discounts are nonlinear tari s that condition rebates or marginal prices on meeting aggregate purchase or market share targets. ese discounts are widespread, and are o en the impetus for consumers to form buying groups, or group purchase organizations (GPOs). is papermodels the competitive e ects of the introduction of a GPO to amarket for which the GPO’s member preferences are horizont...

Nonlinear Pricing and Oligopoly

We consider the general problem of price discrimination with nonlinear pricing in an oligopoly setting where firms are spatially differentiated. We characterize the nature of optimal pricing schedules which in turn depends importantly upon the type of private information which the customer possesses – either horizontal uncertainty regarding brand preference or vertical uncertainty regarding qua...

Nonlinear Adjustment Towards Purchasing Power Parity

Stable Group Purchasing Organizations

In this paper, we study the stability of Group Purchasing Organizations (GPOs). GPOs exist in several sectors and benefit its members through quantity discounts and negotiation power when dealing with suppliers. However, despite several obvious benefits, GPOs suffer from member dissatisfaction due to unfair allocations of the accrued savings among its members. We first explore the benefits of a...

Individual and Group Dynamics in Purchasing Activity

As a major part of the daily operation in an enterprise, purchasing frequency is of constant change. Recent approaches on the human dynamics can provide some new insights into the economic behaviors of companies in the supply chain. This paper captures the attributes of creation times of purchase orders to an individual vendor, as well as to all vendors, and further investigates whether they ha...