Asymmetric price effects in the telecommunications services markets

Asymmetric price effects have been observed and reported on in the product literature, but not in the service literature. This paper investigates the asymmetric effects for a number of telecommunications services. Discrete choice methods are used to collect the data. Asymmetries in the price effects are observed between a national and local brand in the case of local, interstate long distance, and cellular markets, while the price effects are reasonably symmetric in the case of paging and Internet services. We also find that the national brands have more symmetric effects between each other, and that the asymmetries are much more pronounced between the national and local brands. In contrast to findings from the product literature, higher quality brands do not dominate in attracting nonbuyers into the market. (C) 2002 Elsevier Science Inc. All rights reserved.