We set up a game-theoretic model to examine the oligopolistic price competition, considering two features of online search: the existence of a common search ordering and shoppers who have non-positive search cost. We find that in equilibrium firms set their prices probabilistically rather than...

Online anonymity has posed a significant threat on online reputation mechanisms and online identity management. How to improve the reliability and effectiveness of online reputation has thus become an important question of theoretical and practical interest. We examine a reputation market in an...

This paper studies how to endogenously assess the value of a ldquo;superiorrdquo; advertising position within the price competition and examines the resulting location competition outcomes and price dispersion patterns. We consider a game-theoretic model in which firms compete for advertising...

Keyword advertising, or "sponsored links" that appear alongside online search results or other online content, has grown into a multibillion-dollar market. Providers of keyword advertising, such as Google and Yahoo!, profit by auctioning keywords to advertisers. One issue of increasing...

Online reputation trading is a new phenomenon facilitated by the prosperity of e-commerce and social networks. Whether reputations will be reliable when people can purchase rather than build their reputations is a natural concern and also a challenge to online marketplaces. In the present study,...