This paper shows how a firm can use non-targeted advertising to exploit consumers' desire for social status. A … monopolist sells multiple varieties of a good to consumers who each care about what others believe about his wealth. Advertising …

promotion, in a model where a seller employs informative advertising to launch a new product. We propose a fairly general … advertising technology for the study of three promotional strategies—mass, imperfectly targeted, and customer directed advertising … (CDA). We find that both the private and the social incentives to use distinct advertising strategies are aligned, and that …