Econ Papers Daily / 期刊论文
超越都市均值：地方市场的食品需求
Beyond Metropolitan Averages: Food Demand Across Local Markets
摘要
Demand estimates are commonly used to inform firm strategy and public policy, yet they can obscure important variation in demand across geographic space that is relevant for local business decisions and policy interventions. Prior work documents demand heterogeneity across countries, regions, states, and between coarse urban‐rural categories, but evidence on sub‐metropolitan variation is limited. This study documents within‐metro geographic heterogeneity in market shares and willingness‐to‐pay (WTP) for retail and foodservice protein products. I use nearly six years of publicly available survey data and random parameters logit models that include municipality interactions with alternative‐specific constants and price sensitivity to estimate municipality‐specific market shares and WTP in the Phoenix metropolitan area. Demand varies substantially across adjacent municipalities. Central Phoenix residents exhibit higher retail WTP for conventional beef, pork, and chicken products, while both central Phoenix and Scottsdale‐Tempe residents show consistently higher foodservice WTP. Median WTP in these municipalities is roughly 30–50% higher than in surrounding suburbs, whereas suburban groups exhibit similar valuations to one another. These within‐metro differences are large enough to affect targeted pricing and assortment strategies and to produce uneven distributional welfare effects from local price policies (e.g., taxes). The results suggest that investment in geographically refined demand analyses could better inform policy interventions and business decisions at the local level, where those decisions are often made.
中文摘要
摘要 需求估计常用于指导企业战略和公共政策，但可能掩盖地理空间上需求的重要差异，而这些差异与地方商业决策和政策干预密切相关。已有研究记录了国家、地区、州以及城乡粗分类之间的需求异质性，但关于大都市内部次区域差异的证据仍然有限。本研究揭示了凤凰城大都市区内零售和餐饮服务蛋白质产品市场份额及支付意愿（WTP）的地理异质性。利用近六年的公开调查数据，通过随机参数Logit模型（包含市政区与替代特定常数及价格敏感性的交互项），估算了凤凰城大都市区各市政区的市场份额和支付意愿。相邻市政区之间的需求存在显著差异。凤凰城市中心居民对传统牛肉、猪肉和鸡肉产品的零售支付意愿更高，而凤凰城市中心及斯科茨代尔-坦佩居民的餐饮服务支付意愿始终较高。这些市政区的支付意愿中位数比周边郊区高出约30-50%，而郊区群体之间的估值则较为接近。这种大都市内部差异足以影响针对性的定价和品类策略，并导致地方价格政策（如税收）产生不均衡的福利分配效应。研究结果表明，投资于地理精细化需求分析，能够更好地为地方层面的政策干预和商业决策提供信息，而这类决策通常正是在地方层面做出的。