We study mergers in a market where N firms sell a homogeneous good and consumers search sequentially to discover prices … environment, the search behavior of consumers. Endogenous changes in consumer search may strengthen, or alternatively, offset the …

I examine a search model a la' Burdett and Judd (1983). Consumers are embedded in a consumers network, they may costly … effect of endogenous consumers externalities on market functioning. I first show that when search costs are low consumers … randomize between searching for one price and two price quotations (high intensity search equilibrium). Otherwise, consumers …

consumers search for satisfactory deals. In the pre-merger symmetricequilibrium, the probability that a firm is the next one to … raise their pricesmore than what the outsiders do, consumers start searching for good deals at the non-mergingstores. Only … which case their price may even belower than the price of the outsiders. In that case, consumers visit first the merged …

other hand, the fact that a firm, despite its best efforts, may fail to live up to consumers' more demanding expectations …