In many services markets such as consulting, auto-repair, financial planning and healthcare, the service provider may have more information about the customer's problem than the customer, and different customers may impose different costs on the service provider. In principle, the service...

While millions of products are sold on its retail platform, Amazon.com itself stocks and sells only a very small fraction of them. Most of these products are sold by third-party sellers who pay Amazon a fee for each unit sold. Empirical evidence clearly suggests that Amazon tends to sell...

While millions of products are sold on its retail platform, Amazon.com itself stocks and sells only a small fraction of them. Most of these products are sold by third-party sellers, who pay Amazon a fee for each unit sold. Empirical evidence clearly suggests that Amazon tends to sell high-demand...

This paper examines the effects of consumer preferences, firms’ costs and advertising efficiencies on firms’ pricing and persuasive advertising strategies. We show that as the firms’ horizontal differentiation increases, the firm with a lower value-added product tends to increase...