Summary: position is, er, a positional good.
Why Ice Cream Sellers Stand Next to Each Other Instead of Spreading Out
21–30 of 73 posts
Re: Why Ice Cream Sellers Stand Next to Each Other Instead of Spreading Out
#22But what happens when there are three ice-cream sellers?
There's no stable equilibrium. The ones on the edges are constantly incentivized to move towards the center, but at some point the guy in the middle is better off moving anywhere else. Kind of like the "divide the dollar" game.
Re: Why Ice Cream Sellers Stand Next to Each Other Instead of Spreading Out
#23While the walking distance is not optimal, there is an upside. The ice cream vendors will be driven to differentiate their ice cream lines, and the beach dwellers will be able to comparison shop without walking halfway across the beach.
If only they developed an on-line store and a delivery mechanism. It would be the optimal solution from the customer perspective (price, feature and distance). Thanks in part to the ubiqutious internet.
Re: Why Ice Cream Sellers Stand Next to Each Other Instead of Spreading Out
#24The application to politics is especially relevant: "Anthony Downs noted that Hoteling's model could explain political competition. ... As with the ice cream sellers on the beach the political candidates will choose a political position that is virtually the same as their opponent's. Furthermore the candidates will be driven to select the political position of the median voter." This jives with gut intuition, that in…
Not only are the differences between Republican/Democrat not that great, but in the last 50 years they have largely swapped constituencies!
It started when JFK pushed civil rights. This made Democrats popular with Northern civil rights activists. Nixon took advantage of this with his "Southern strategy" that used the issue as a wedge to get Southerners to vote Republican for the first time ever. (Previously the South wouldn't vote Republican because they held the Republicans responsible for the Civil War.) The swap cascaded from there as each successful candidate got there by appealing to what had once been the other party's base. (Reagan took a particularly chunk, hence the phrase "Reagan democrat".)
The swap completed with George Bush.
Re: Why Ice Cream Sellers Stand Next to Each Other Instead of Spreading Out
#25Many browsers and OS combinators suffer problems when Java applets are automatically launched. Please add a [JAVA] tag in future.
Huh, you're right, there is Java in there - I had no idea, it looked like simple image files. Couple questions for more savvy people - 1. Why would the author do that for static images? 2. Is there any way I can see that going forwards to warn people? I'm running Chrome/Win7, and didn't even notice. I looked up the source and there it is - But it really makes no sense why the author would do that - it's just a straig…
Perhaps it's supposed to be interactive .. interestingly I did try and move the spots but then conccluded that it was just an image. Maybe it's a public beta ;0)>
Re: Why Ice Cream Sellers Stand Next to Each Other Instead of Spreading Out
#26Earlier quoted context omitted.
They'd get fewer customers through their doors but not necessarily less customers buying.
Sure, so I guess there's 2 alternatives: 1. Be all over the town, and rely on marketing to get people to come to your shop and not the others. 2. Be all in the same street, get more walk in customers, and rely on good salespeople and good deals to get the sales. I'm guessing that they've found 2 to work better than 1. Also means they can take advantage of each others marketing. Also I expect once a street becomes 'kn…
Does this explain the disproportionate prestige of .com?
Re: Why Ice Cream Sellers Stand Next to Each Other Instead of Spreading Out
#27But what happens when there are three ice-cream sellers?
There's no stable equilibrium. The ones on the edges are constantly incentivized to move towards the center, but at some point the guy in the middle is better off moving anywhere else. Kind of like the "divide the dollar" game.
I doubt that position is important if the 3 are directly adjacent one another, or at least not as important as say the appearance of your store front or your prices or your quality or your reputation or your display of well known logos ....
If I walk all the way down the beach 3m further to get to a nicer looking icecream shop is nothing. Indeed I think I'd look at the price of the icecreams first, then the ones people are leaving with and make a cost analysis, then probably choose the one selling pistachio flavoured icecream.
Re: Why Ice Cream Sellers Stand Next to Each Other Instead of Spreading Out
#28While the walking distance is not optimal, there is an upside. The ice cream vendors will be driven to differentiate their ice cream lines, and the beach dwellers will be able to comparison shop without walking halfway across the beach.
If only they developed an on-line store and a delivery mechanism. It would be the optimal solution from the customer perspective (price, feature and distance). Thanks in part to the ubiqutious internet.
You might be making a joke, but you also might have something here. If you can get GPS coordinates localized down to 5 meters, then you can have a mobile app that will let you place orders in places like public parks and on the beach. The app would look up vendors in the same location who are currently "open", and present virtual storefronts for them. The app would send the name, the precise GPS coordinates and, at the option of the user, a photograph to aid in finding the customer.
On the vendor side of the app, you'd have a list of orders and a map of the customers. Done properly, this could be a big win for vendors, since ordering would be easier, increased volume would be likely, and they would be better able to plan production/delivery.
Basically, it's like Loopt but for hyper-local b2c. Instead of hooking up singles or friends, you're hooking up cart vendors and their customers.
Re: Why Ice Cream Sellers Stand Next to Each Other Instead of Spreading Out
#29Earlier quoted context omitted.
Sure, so I guess there's 2 alternatives: 1. Be all over the town, and rely on marketing to get people to come to your shop and not the others. 2. Be all in the same street, get more walk in customers, and rely on good salespeople and good deals to get the sales. I'm guessing that they've found 2 to work better than 1. Also means they can take advantage of each others marketing. Also I expect once a street becomes 'kn…
Does this explain the disproportionate prestige of .com?
> Does this explain the disproportionate prestige of .com?
It's part of it. Here's a few other reasons:
1. It's a quality indicator: It means it's more likely that the company has been around a long time and that it's not a scam.
2. People's default surfing habits had them looking for the .com. I had a .net domain for a company I ran and we bought the .com for $3000 after a number of clients told us they forgot our site, and worse - sent emails to the .com address that we never got.
3. This is a more recent development, but with the iPhone having a ".com" button on the keyboard, that makes it even more advantageous going forwards.
Re: Why Ice Cream Sellers Stand Next to Each Other Instead of Spreading Out
#30Earlier quoted context omitted.
Huh, you're right, there is Java in there - I had no idea, it looked like simple image files. Couple questions for more savvy people - 1. Why would the author do that for static images? 2. Is there any way I can see that going forwards to warn people? I'm running Chrome/Win7, and didn't even notice. I looked up the source and there it is - But it really makes no sense why the author would do that - it's just a straig…
Perhaps it was an attempt to stop people from "stealing" his images.. or perhaps the author just doesn't know any better...
We should probably apply Hanlon's razor "Never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by stupidity." and assume he doesn't understand progressive enhancement