This paper shows how a firm can use non-targeted advertising to exploit consumers' desire for social status. A monopolist sells multiple varieties of a good to consumers who each care about what others believe about his wealth. Advertising allows consumers both to buy different varieties and to...

The paper formalizes the intuition that brands are consumed for image reasons and that advertising creates a brand's image. The key idea is that advertising informs the public of brand names and creates the possibility of conspicuous consumption by rendering brands a signalling device. In a...

Economists have emphasized the role of dissipative advertising and price as signals of quality. Most works, however, limit the number of types to two options: high and low quality. Yet, production costs and quality both result from Ramp;D efforts and therefore are both uncertain. I characterize...

Consumers may purchase durable goods on the basis of short-term "temptation," as well as their long-term interests. I adapt Gul and Pesendorfer's (2001) representation of self-control preferences to a market for durable goods. Consumers' temptation will increase profit, and can ameliorate a...

We estimate the distribution of television advertising elasticities and the distribution of the advertising return on investment (ROI) for a large number of products in many categories. Our results reveal substantially smaller advertising elasticities compared to the results documented in the...

The retail industry is one of the top spenders in advertising, and retailers are keen to design an effective ad campaign targeting a relevant audience. We study how the effects of retail advertising on store traffic depend on customer location, ad content, and behavioral attributes using...

This paper argues, in the context of targeted advertising, that receivers' rational inattention and ability to independently acquire information have a non-trivial impact on the sender's optimal disclosure strategy. In our model, a monopolist has an opportunity to launch an advertising campaign...

If producers have more information than consumers about goods' attributes, then they may use non-price (rather than price) adjustment mechanisms and, consequently, the market may reach a new equilibrium even if prices don't change. We study a situation where producers adjust the quantity per...

There is widespread evidence that some firms use false advertising to overstate the value of their products. Using a model in which a policymaker is able to punish such false claims, we characterize a natural equilibrium in which false advertising actively influences rational buyers. We analyze...