We examine the optimal acquisition of information about a common uncertain cost factor by two competing firms seeking to price a new product. We show that existing findings regarding the acquisition of demand information or the acquisition of either cost or demand information related to quantity...

The personal video recorder (PVR) facilitates the use of targeted advertising by allowing companies to monitor television viewing behavior and to build demographic profiles of viewers from the data that are collected. Our research explores the extent to which an advertiser should allocate...

In this note I investigate the outcome of a static price competition between a strong firm (a firm with an established loyal consumer base) and a weak firm (a firm without loyal consumers). The consumers are divided into the strong firm's loyal segment and the switching segment, members of which...

We develop an analytical framework to investigate the competitive implications of personalized pricing (PP), whereby firms charge different prices to different consumers based on their willingness to pay. We embed PP in a model of vertical product differentiation and show how it affects firms'...