دانلود رایگان مقاله نقش شبکه های مصرف کننده در رقابت چند ویژگی شرکت ها و نابرابری سهم بازار

Abstract

We develop a location analysis spatial model of firms’ competition in multicharacteristics space, where consumers’ opinions about the firms’ products are distributed on multilayered networks. Firms do not compete on price but only on location upon the products’ multi-characteristics space, and they aim to attract the 2 maximum number of consumers. Boundedly rational consumers have distinct ideal points/tastes over the possible available firm locations but, crucially, they are affected by the opinions of their neighbors. Proposing a dynamic agent-based analysis on firms’ location choice we characterize multi-dimensional product differentiation competition as adaptive learning by firms’ managers and we argue that such a complex systems approach advances the analysis in alternative ways, beyond gametheoretic calculations.

4. Conclusions

This paper contributes to the literature of product-characteristics competition at the firm-level by proposing an evolutionary economic approach that focuses on the role of consumers’ social networks in the creation of new product characteristics. In the evolutionary framework, firms’ competition for market share depends on the preferences/tastes of many economic agents that interact and exchange knowledge/ideas/opinions, thereby forming complex social networks which condition the evolution of the process. The influence of consumers’ social networks in the development of new products is neglected in the traditional literature with ‘passive’ and homogeneous consumers: consumption is aggregated into economy’s demand side and it is reduced to the purchase decision only, excluding social interactions. On the supply side, firms’ managers incorporate new characteristics to their products that consumers can either buy or not without taking into account consumers’ heterogeneous preferences and the role of their social networks.