Tiers in Consumer Fractional Ownership Markets

Posted: 1 Aug 2011 Last revised: 15 Aug 2012

See all articles by Yu Wang

Yu Wang

California State University, Long Beach

Ernan Haruvy

McGill University; McGill University - Desautels Faculty of Management

Date Written: August 10, 2011

Abstract

In fractional ownership markets, consumers purchase a share in a property and can later exchange it with other owners through a secondary market. Forward-looking consumers may purchase low quality shares at a low price with the intention of trading up. This poses a serious problem. We show that firms can adopt a tiered approach for exchange so as to restore sales of high quality shares in the primary market, while at the same time facilitating exchanges in the secondary market. Data from laboratory markets strongly support this argument. Firm revenue and total social surplus are both higher in tiered than in tier-free markets. Furthermore, the impact of the tier structure depends on the exchange mechanism the firm uses. Over time, participants adapt to changes in tier structure in the direction predicted by theory. Risk aversion partly explains the deviation of data from theoretical predictions.

Keywords: fractional ownership, exchange mechanism, matching, economics experiments, risk aversion

JEL Classification: C78, C91, C92, D80

Suggested Citation

Wang, Yu and Haruvy, Ernan, Tiers in Consumer Fractional Ownership Markets (August 10, 2011). Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=1709470 or http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.1709470

Yu Wang (Contact Author)

California State University, Long Beach ( email )

1250 Bellflower Blvd.
Long Beach, CA 90840
United States

Ernan Haruvy

McGill University ( email )

1001 Sherbrooke St. W
Montreal, Quebec H3A 1G5
Canada

McGill University - Desautels Faculty of Management ( email )

1001 Sherbrooke St. West
Montreal, Quebec H3A1G5 H3A 2M1
Canada

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