On The Theory Of Switching Costs Based On The New Bank Card Industry

In the elaboration of the market structure - enterprise conduct — market performance in the traditional industrial organization theory, the market structure is the key factor influencing enterprise conduct, namely the higher the degree of monopoly is, the stronger the enterprise's ability of economical control is, the stronger its ability of price control is. This conclusion that the Harvard school obtains through the real diagnosis research has the significant sense to the development of the industrial organization theory, and it becomes the mainstream of the industrial organization theory. Hereafter, the Chicago school and many other schools send out the challenge to the viewpoint of the Harvard school that high concentration leads to high profits, but all that has not vacillated the foundation status of the SCP theory.This paper takes the key factor influencing market structure of the Harvard school as a starting point. It analyzes that if these key factors have little effect on market structure in some markets, the enterprise still has its own price behavior and the product price in the market still deviates the cost. For example, the degree of concentration in some markets is not high, the enterprise have not achieved the best economical scale, enterprise's productivity restraint is not big, the product difference is very small, and the enterprise entries and exits have not too greatly limits. This paper takes the bankcard industry as an example. At present, our country commercial bank distributes debit card which basically uses in the wages providing, the deposit and the expense. Its function difference is very small, and its productivity restraint is very small (theoretically a commercial bank may satisfy complete bankcard demand), and barriers to entry are low. Then if according to market structure deciding enterprise conduct, the market price of bankcard should not deviate the cost too much. But four big state-owned banks started a disturbance of bankcard charge in 2004, the main reason causing this price behavior is not the market structure, but is the influence of the consumer behavior. Once the consumer expended some kind of product in an enterprise, it possibly has some kind of dependence or expense custom to this kind of product. For this reason, consumers...