Location model

A location (spatial) model refers to any monopolistic competition model in economics that demonstrates consumer preference for particular brands of goods and their locations. Examples of location models include Hotelling’s Location Model, Salop’s Circle Model, and hybrid variations. A location (spatial) model refers to any monopolistic competition model in economics that demonstrates consumer preference for particular brands of goods and their locations. Examples of location models include Hotelling’s Location Model, Salop’s Circle Model, and hybrid variations. In traditional economic models, consumers display preference given the constraints of a product characteristic space. Consumers perceive certain brands with common characteristics to be close substitutes, and differentiate these products from their unique characteristics. For example, there are many brands of chocolate with nuts and others without them. Hence, the chocolate with nuts is a constraint of its product characteristic space. On the other hand, consumers in location models display preference for both the utility gained from a particular brand’s characteristics as well as its geographic location; these two factors form an enhanced “product characteristic space”. Consumers are now willing to sacrifice pleasure from products for a closer geographic location, and vice versa. For example, consumers realize high costs for products that are located far from their spatial point (e.g. transportation costs, time, etc.) and also for products that deviate from their ideal features. Firms have greater market power when they satisfy the consumer’s demand for products at closer distance or preferred products. In 1929, Hotelling developed a location model that demonstrates the relationship between location and pricing behavior of firms. He represented this notion through a line of fixed length. Assuming all consumers are identical (except for location) and consumers are evenly dispersed along the line, both the firms and consumer respond to changes in demand and the economic environment.