Price Wars: Strategic Interaction In Business

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Strategic interaction in business – Price wars

One, if not the main objective of all companies is to attract as many customers as possible by differentiating itself from its competitors. To do so, they use many different strategies to outdo their competitors. Cutting prices is one of them. They must be careful, reducing prices may provoke a price war between the firm and its competitors. This means that when one lowers its prices to try to steal the other’s market share, the other will respond by reducing its price even more to stay in competition. Both firms enter a vicious circle, from which buyers benefit, but may be fatal for the companies involved. Thus a firm must take into consideration present as well as future gains and losses when …show more content…

Fare wars have become an important aspect of their industry and have altered the well being of both workers and travelers. According to several studies, fare wars have reduced industry profits by nearly $8 billion, from 1979 to 1995, however they have also been a great source of benefits for travelers. Fare wars definitely shortened the overall industry profits and contribute to their inconstancy. For example, when American Airlines, Northwest Airlines, and other U.S. carriers engaged in fare war by overtaking one another’s lowered prices it resulted in record volumes of air travel and record losses. According to some estimation, the total losses the industry went through that year exceeded the joined profits for the entire industry from its …show more content…

It involves two individuals who have committed a crime and are left with two options, confess or deny. While making this decision they cannot communicate to each other. If they both tell the truth they will get a rather short sentence. If only one confesses the other will get a relatively long sentence while he will be free. If both remain silent, they will both get a very short sentence. According to this principle, both prisoners will try to anticipate the other’s decision and react according to it, which in all cases will lead to a confession from both of them.

The two possible outcomes in the Prisoner’s Dilemma of the airline companies are to cooperate or not. If both choose to be cooperative then the situation will be profitable for both, conversely if they chose to compete then they will both lose. The obstacle in this situation is that it is profitable for both firms to set high price but if each individual firm try to maximize its own profit it will be tempted to set a low price hoping that its competitor will sets a high price. It can therefor be concluded that communication and consideration of mutual benefits are the keys to the potential gains of

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