The follower competitive location problem with comparison-shopping

Abstract

In competitive settings, firms locate their stores to take advantage of consumers’ behavior to maximize their market share. A common behavior is comparison-shopping: in this behavioral pattern, consumers visit multiple stores that sell non-identical products, which are mutual substitutes, before making their purchase decision. This behavior has never been included in location-prescribing models for competitive firms. Given existing branches of one firm, we address the location problem of a follower firm that locates its own branches. We present insights on the instance used by ReVelle in his maximum capture formulation, provide computational experience with one thousand 100-node instances, and consider a realistic case using a 353-node network of Santiago, Chile. The results are compared in terms of the demand captured by each firm and the locational patterns that result from different consumer behaviors.