We examine the development of UK outlets of a major fast food chain, from inauguration in 1974 until 1990, after which industry structure changed somewhat. The chain effectively introduced the counter-service burger concept. Locational spread across local authority district markets is explained...

Oligopolistic services and branch network decisions are studied. There are two opposing effects when a firm decides the number of branches : the captivation effect of increasing market power, and a cost effect of average costs. These ideas are formalized in a two-city Hotelling model. Firms face...

In this paper we study whether learning from rivals affects within-market location decisions between competing firms. We show it does, using detailed locational data from two leading hamburger chains in the UK. Using four different tests, we demonstrate that alternative explanations –...