Summary information

Study title

Does products complexity matter for competition in experimental retail markets?

Creator

Sitzia, S, University of East Anglia
Zizzo, D, University of Newcastle

Study number / PID

851698 (UKDA)

10.5255/UKDA-SN-851698 (DOI)

Data access

Restricted

Series

Not available

Abstract

Data are collected by means of an economic experiments. The description of the experiment is as follows: We ran two experiments: a posted offer market experiment with three treatments (Experiment 1) and an individual choice experiment with two treatments and with a posted offer market frame (Experiment 2). A posted offer market setup corresponds to the reality of retail markets where sellers post prices and buyers simply decide whether and how much to buy at the given price. Both experiments involved the same two pairs of products (S1 and C1 or S2 and C2), two trial periods using an example product and four phases; each phase had 10 independent trading periods. In Experiment 1, subjects were randomly assigned to the role either of seller or buyer while in Experiment 2 all subjects were buyers. They were handed instructions, questionnaires, and consent forms. After they read the instructions they answered the questionnaire and if they had any doubts they could ask for clarification. When all the participants were ready, after they did the two trial periods, the experiment started. In the trial periods we employed an example product, which was the same across sessions. The reason why we used an example product is two-fold. Firstly, we did not want to disclose any information regarding both lotteries. Secondly, we wanted to avoid any possible anchoring effect to the outcomes occurred in the trial phase that could have affected buyers’ decisions. In both experiments we used ‘points’ as the experimental currency (the conversion rate being 975 points to one pound). Experiment 1 involved 3 treatments: B (Baseline), IS1 (Informed Seller with one product on sale), and IS2 (Informed Seller with two products on sale simultaneously). The key difference relative to Experiment 1 was that this was an individual choice experiment. Since there was not a seller, prices were randomly generated from a uniform distribution. Half of the subjects faced high prices ranging between 75...
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Topics

Methodology

Data collection period

01/09/2009 - 30/11/2014

Country

United Kingdom

Time dimension

Not available

Analysis unit

Individual

Universe

Not available

Sampling procedure

Not available

Kind of data

Numeric

Data collection mode

Economic Experiment

Funding information

Grant number

CCP’s ESRC grant number RES-578-28-0002

Access

Publisher

UK Data Service

Publication year

2015

Terms of data access

The Data Collection is available for download to users registered with the UK Data Service.

Related publications

Not available