Document de travail

Product Design and Decision Rights in Vertical Structures

Pierre Dubois et Bruno Jullien

Résumé

The paper argues that the emergence of private labels can be partially explained by the new information technologies available at the retail level. In our approach, the owner of a brand has ìdecision rightsîon product design, while the details of the production and distribution are left to contractual negotiation. Manufacturers have privileged information about the cost of improving quality, while distributors have private information on the impact of quality on demand. We show that ownership of the brand should be allocated to the party with a relative informational advantage. In particular, if the information of the distributor improves due to a technological shock on data collection and information management, it may become optimal for the distributor to introduce its own brand, rather than to distribute a manufacturerís brand.

Mots-clés

store brand; private label; asymmetric information; vertical structures; product design; decision rights;

Remplacé par

Pierre Dubois et Bruno Jullien, « Product Design and Decision Rights in Vertical Structures », Research in Economics, vol. 70, décembre 2016, p. 558–568.

Référence

Pierre Dubois et Bruno Jullien, « Product Design and Decision Rights in Vertical Structures », TSE Working Paper, n° 16-730, novembre 2016.

Voir aussi

Publié dans

TSE Working Paper, n° 16-730, novembre 2016