Price Competition under Stockpiling and Flexible Consumption

Conventional wisdom suggests that the main effect of price promotion is on brand switching (i.e., secondary demand); however, some recent studies demonstrate that the primary demand expansion effect can be considerably larger than previously believed. A significant driver of this primary demand effect is consumer stockpiling in response to price promotions. Indeed, experimental studies have shown that additional inventory on hand can lead to an endogenous increase in consumption. The authors develop a model of price competition between firms in response to the stockpiling and subsequent consumption dynamics of consumers. In this setting, the flexible consumption effect causes more intense price competition, deeper promotions, and an increase in the frequency of promotions. The authors use two years of scanner panel data from eight product categories and 4313 stockkeeping units to test three implications of the theoretical model; they find strong support for each.