It is worth one-year long inconvenience to have a new Atrium Food Court. Seats here are comfortable and the food varieties expand. There is a new stand called Zen Blossom selling Chinese foods or Sushi. The price for each kind of meal is more expensive than it is in Golden Dragon, another Chinese food restaurant near the university.
Inspecting the competition between vendors in a small market is fun. Price Theory had told me Golden Dragon would get more buyers, or Blossom Zen would lower the prices. But what I see is Zen Blossom still charges the same high prices and gets customers. I spent the time of digesting one cheeseburger in thinking why Price Theory lost its power. My explanation is the followings:
Every food, like chicken sandwich, sesame chicken rice, or spaghetti, in the food court is highly substitute to each other. Most customers come to the food court without preference to each food. They choose at the last moment. So we can see everything, can be sold given the high level substitution. A customer who wants to eat Chinese food for lunch, for example, will go to Golden Dragon or Chinese restaurants elsewhere, instead of Zen Blossom. Similarly, we can precisely predict the one who wants to eat pizza will go to NY Pizza for fresh pizza, not Brickyard Pizza selling baked frozen pizza in the food court.
Golden Dragon’s Sesame Chicken ($4.90 tax included) It takes one-year training to swallow it all.
Zen Blossom’s Sesame Chicken ($ 4.18 tax not included) The size is less than 2/3 of Golden Dragon’s. They taste similar, but the latter one is relatively authentic
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Similar cases are around all of us. Some people who had studied intermediate microeconomics might attribute the fails of traditional Price Theory to the information asymmetry. It cannot, however, verify the price difference exists in the long run. I have 95% of confidence that my argument is correct.
Box Meal from an Asia Supermarket This is very close to real Chinese food.
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