We examine, in a strategic setting, the broad issue of how retail channel structures--retail monopoly versus retail duopoly--impact a manufacturer's optimal new product design, both in terms of engineering design specifications as well as manufacturer and retailer profits. Our strategic...

Online information servers that provide access to diverse databases where users can search for, browse through, and download the information they need have been rapidly increasing in number in the past few years. Online vendors have traditionally charged users for information on the based on the...

Market structure models are used to identify submarkets or to test for the presence of submarkets where within-group competition is much stronger than across group competition. The implicit assumption in such models is that the brands in a submarket compete on the basis of their shared product...

A brand switching model that considers the choices: previous choice, current choice, and substitute choice, if the current choice were not available, is developed and estimated. An important assumption of the model is that the market consists of two types of consumers: "Loyals" and "Shoppers."...

While it provides excellent descriptions of behavior, existing consumer research on information seeking and processing largely fails to explain why consumers engage in various types of activities. This paper presents an economic framework for measuring costs/benefits of search behavior which can...