Competition between Small Shops and a Large Shopping Center

We study competition between two shopping places: a shopping street, which accommodates many independent small shops, and a large shopping center. The approach we propose in this paper combines the features of spatial competition models and monopolistic competition models. Consumers can shop at any of the shopping places (or at both), as well as choose how much of each variety to purchase. We find that the equilibrium is shaped by interaction of two opposite effects: the market expansion effect (which arises because a shopping center becomes more appealing for consumers when its size increases) and the standard competition effect. Firms' profits increase (decrease) in response to entry of new competitors to the shopping street if and only if the former (latter) effect is a dominant one. We also show that the shopping street cannot be arbitrarily small under free entry and exit of shops and under a given size of the shopping center. However, the shopping street can abruptly vanish when the shopping center gets sufficiently large.