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This paper studies how multichannel retailers choose the product quality level and decide which attribute to make prominent in their physical store in a competitive environment.

This paper develops a game theoretic model, in which multichannel retailers' decisions are made in three stages. Using prominent experiential attributes (e.g. functionality) in their offline store and product quality decisions, multichannel retailers are capable of transferring the sales between different channels.

This analysis shows that making different attributes prominent in their physical store may be an equilibrium, and each multichannel retailer chooses the highest quality level for the prominent attribute. However, the prominent attribute of the highest quality level is not always optimal. Under certain conditions, multichannel retailers may make the experiential attribute prominent in their respective physical stores, which can result in equilibrium.

The results indicate that multichannel retailers should avoid blindly highlighting high-quality attributes in a competitive environment, or falling into price completion.

From the perspective of prominent attributes, this study designs the optimal product line based on channel characteristics. The results of the research can provide practical implications for multichannel retailers to increase sales.

Economic ideas are the product of contemplation, but also of our economic lives. In the history of ideas, Gérard Debreu’s shining book of 1959, Theory of Value, represents the pinnacle of purity in contemplating economic life. Rather than contextualizing this oeuvre through his intellectual life, as is usually done, this essay describes his axiomatic analysis by contextualizing it through his economic life. What do we learn about Debreu’s axioms on consumption when thinking of his own consumption? What do we learn about his theory of value when thinking of his own values? Historiographically, this approach permits the use of a widely neglected source in the history of economics: anecdotes. Epistemologically, blending axioms and anecdotes offers a description of how axioms regulate an economic discourse. Finally, this essay offers a language for the material dimensions of economic life that are so underexposed in Debreu’s own work.

The location choices of foreign direct investment within the European Union are increasingly seen as “location tournaments” between countries willing to attract firms. The spatial organization of these multinational firms has become a very sensitive topic. Within this context, we study the location choices of Japanese firms in Europe during the period 1984–1993. Added to the classical location advantages that may determine the choice of an investor, various state policy variables are considered. The attractiveness of countries might also be submitted to agglomeration effects with the clustering of Japanese firms generating self-reinforcing positive externalities. We test, in a conditional logit model, for this effect and for its temporal dimension: do Japanese firms tend to choose the same countries and the same dates of entry? We find evidence of both spatial and temporal agglomeration in the location behavior of Japanese firms in Europe. We also try to determine the influence of competetion intensity on the proximity choices of firms.