Market Segmentation and the Sources of Rents From Innovation: Personal Computers in the Late 1980's (Classic Reprint) - Hardcover

Timothy F. Bresnahan

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0483878359 ISBN 13: 9780483878358

Publisher: Forgotten Books, 2018

Synopsis

Branded and frontier power shape the late-1980s PC market, driving how firms earned temporary rents from innovation.

This book analyzes how two big ideas—brand name strength and frontier technology—divided PCs into distinct clusters and limited how much competition could spill across groups.

In concrete terms, the work shows that market power came from both a strong brand and being on the cutting edge. It explains how this segmentation helped some firms protect their innovations, while others competed mainly within their own cluster. The study uses a formal model to measure demand, substitution, and the effect of competitive events like entry and price cuts.

• Two principles of differentiation drive clustering: Branded vs. Non-Branded and Frontier vs. Non-Frontier.
• How segmentation confines the impact of competitive moves to the same cluster.
• How a PD GEV model estimates demand and substitution patterns across clusters.
• The practical role of branding and technology frontiers in creating transitory rents for PC firms.

Ideal for readers of economics of innovation and market structure, this edition helps clarify how branding and frontier tech shaped incentives to innovate in the PC industry.

Edition details

• Publisher: Forgotten Books
• Publication date: 2018
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0483878359
• ISBN 13: 9780483878358
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 61