Quality and Price Personalization under Customer Recognition : a Dynamic Monopoly Model with Contrasting Equilibria

We present a model of market hyper-segmentation, where a monopolist acquires within a short time all information about the preferences of consumers who purchase its vertically differentiated products within a given period. The firrm offers a new price/quality schedule after each commitment period. Lower consumer types may have an incentive to delay their purchases until next period to obtain a better introductory offer to new customers. The monopolist counters this incentive by offering higher informational rents. Considering the dynamic game played by the monopolist and its customers, we find that there is always a Markov perfect equilibrium (MPE) in which the firm immediately sells the good to all its customers, offering the Mussa-Rosen static equilibrium schedule to first time customers (and getting full commitment profits). However, if the commitment period between two offers is long enough, there is another MPE, where the number of customers that are served expands only gradually. Contrary to the Coasian result for a durable-good monopoly, we find that in both equilibria the profit of the monopolist increases (and the consumers' expected surplus decreases) as the interval of commitment shrinks. The model yields policy implications for regulation on information collection and commitment period