Product variety and price strategy in the ski manufacturing industry

The present paper aims at examining the role of variety in the ski manufacturing industry and its relevance in firms' price setting strategies. In particular, it intends to investigate and to empirically test three hypotheses concerning the relations between: product quality and prices; variety in technical characteristics and prices; variety in service characteristics and prices. Our empirical investigation finds that prices are positively affected by product quality and positively affected by variety in service characteristics. This means that a high degree of product variety allows firms to charge a premium price on consumers, who are able to find the product that best meets their needs and are therefore willing to pay a higher price. By contrast, variety in technical characteristics negatively impacts prices. In a context where a dominant design has emerged and new varieties are not radically different from each other, the gains in economies of scale and scope outweigh the costs of the increased flexibility in the equipment required to produce variety.