Counterfactual Simulations. The results from the previous section suggest that consumers’ when, what and where-to-buy decisions are impacted by Chapter 11 bankruptcy filing decisions of automobile manufactur- ers. Emergence from Chapter 11 bankruptcy helps increase GM’s brand equity while the brand equity of Chrysler LLC drops after emerging from bankruptcy protection. In addition, the re- sults indicate that consumers’ utility significantly decreases with physical distance to the dealer. This implies that in a market with spatially differentiated dealers and spatially dispersed con- xxxxxx, bankruptcy induced distribution network pruning will also directly impact consumers’ where-to-buy decisions. In this section, I quantify the differential impact of bankruptcy-induced brand equity changes and bankruptcy-induced distribution network pruning on what, when, and where consumers buy. To do so, I compute brand and retailer-level market shares and sales across several coun- terfactual scenarios and compare them with baseline market shares. Baseline scenario involves choices predicted using the proposed model and the observed data.
