We provide generalizable results on the price and promotion tactics employed in the U.S. retail grocery industry. First, we document a large degree of price dispersion for UPCs and brands across stores, both nationally and at the local market level. Base price differences across stores and price promotions contribute to the overall price variance, and we show how to decompose the price variance into base price and promotion components. Second, we document that a large percentage of the variation in prices and promotion tactics across stores can be explained by retail chain and especially market/chain factors, whereas market factors explain only smaller percentage of the variation. Third, we show that the chain-level price and promotions similarity can be explained by similarity in demand. In particular, a large percentage of the variance in price elasticities and promotion effects can be explained by retail chain and especially market/retail chain factors. Further, price elasticities and promotion effects across stores of the same chain are hard to distinguish from the chain-market-level mean, and cross-price elasticities are typically imprecisely estimated. These findings suggest that retail managers may plausibly consider price discrimination across stores to be infeasible.

我们提供了有关美国零售杂货行业采用的价格和促销策略的可概括结果。首先，我们记录了 UPC 和品牌在全国和本地市场层面上跨商店的很大程度的价格差异。商店和价格促销之间的基本价格差异导致了整体价格差异，我们展示了如何将价格差异分解为基本价格和促销组件。其次，我们记录了商店间价格和促销策略的很大一部分变化可以由零售链，尤其是市场/连锁因素来解释，而市场因素只能解释较小百分比的变化。第三，我们表明链级价格和促销的相似性可以用需求的相似性来解释。特别是，价格弹性和促销效果的很大一部分差异可以用零售链，尤其是市场/零售链因素来解释。此外，同一连锁店的价格弹性和促销效果很难与连锁市场水平的平均值区分开来，而且交叉价格弹性通常是不精确估计的。这些调查结果表明，零售经理可能认为跨商店的价格歧视是不可行的。