When or where to buy under regular saw-tooth gasoline price cycles
Many markets exhibit saw-tooth pricing, with retailers regularly cutting and restoring prices. When more consumers spend effort on when to buy rather than where to buy, competition softens, writes, Øystein Foros, Mai Nguyen-Ones and Frode Steen in a column published on voxeu.org
The column uses the discounting pattern of Norwegian gas stations, which uniformly raise prices on two days a week, to show the effect on consumer behaviour and firm profits.