The Length of Product Line in Distribution Channels

Abstract

This paper studies a manufacturer's optimal decisions on extending its product line when the manufacturer sells through either a centralized channel or a decentralized channel. We show that a manufacturer may provide a longer product line for consumers in a decentralized channel than in a centralized channel if the market is fully covered. In addition, a manufacturer's decisions on the length of its product line may not always be optimal from a social welfare perspective in either a centralized or a decentralized channel. Under certain conditions, a decentralized channel can provide the product line length that is socially optimal, whereas a centralized channel cannot.

Cite this work

No public copy is stored for this record, so only the metadata is cited.

Stored only when both papers are in the corpus — 87 citations exist upstream.

Papers that cite the same references — the relational fallback while embeddings are still backfilling.