Spatial competition facility location models: Definition, formulation and solution approach

Models are presented for locating a firm's production facilities and determining production levels at these facilities so as to maximize the firm's profit. These models take into account the changes in price at each of the spatially separated markets that would result from the increase in supply provided by the new facilities and also from the response of competing firms. Two different models of spatial competition are presented to represent the competitive market situation in which the firm's production facilities are being located. These models are formulated as variational inequalities; recent sensitivity analysis results for variational inequalities are used to develop derivatives of the prices at each of the spatially separated markets with respect to the production levels at each of the new facilities. These derivatives are used to develop a linear approximation of the implicit function relating prices to productions. A heuristic solution procedure making use of this approximation is proposed.