유통경로구성원들 간의 가격선도상황에 관한 연구

One of common conventional beliefs about the relationship between a manufacturer and a retailer in a marketing field is that a manufacturer is a price leader over a retailer. That is,once the manufacturer sets a wholesale price, given the wholesale price the retailer determines a retail price. Being a price leader may be strategically important for the manufacturer because otherwise, there is no guarantee that the manufacturer's pricing strategies are fully realized in a market. For the market prices to be consistent with the manufacturer’s best interest, the manufacturer may want to be the price leader over the retailer. However, many people observe the growing power of retailers and, consequently the conventional belief may be questionable these days. Therefore, understanding price leadership situations in a distribution channel must be an important issue not only in academic area but also in industry. In recent years, many marketing scholars have investigated various issues related to the channel price leadership theoretically as well as empirically. However, far less prior research explores if and how the price leadership situation between vertical channel members varies across competing national brand manufacturers in a given product category. In this study, we directly address this deficiency in the literature and explore empirically the relationship between the manufacturer and the retailer in terms of the price leadership. By analyzing a multi-store retail database from a grocery chain (Dominick’s), we examine channel price leadership situations in the canned tuna category. The time series approach employing the vector autoregressive model with exogenous variables and the Granger causality test is used to investigate the channel price leadership. This approach is based on the idea that the price follower reacts to the leader’s pricing action and, thus, the follower’s reaction will be observed after the leader’s action. This time series approach allows us to identify a price leader and a follower for each pair of vertical channel members, respectively,in a straightforward fashion. The analysis results reveal that the price leadership situation between vertical channel members varies across competing national brand manufacturers in the canned tuna category. Among five brands (Starkist, Bumble Bee, Chicken of Sea, 3-Diamond, and Geisha) in the category, three brands show that the brand manufacturers are the price leaders over the retailer. In contrast, different price leadership situations are found in the relationships between two other brand manufacturers and the retailer. The absence of a price leader is found in the relationship between Chicken of Sea and the retailer (Dominick's). Chicken of Sea has the lowest retail price but the highest intensity of promotional activity among three premium brands, which implies that it is the weakest premium brand having a relatively weak brand loyalty. The case of the retailer being a price leader is found in the relationship between Geisha and Dominick’s. Geisha has the lowest retail price but the highest intensity of promotional activity in the category. These results imply that the strong brand manufacturer,not relying heavily on promotional activities, are more likely to be the price leader over the retailer.