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...

We study dynamic Bayesian persuasion in an entry game. A sender publicly reveals information to an adopter and a competitor. When the sender's loss from competition is small, the optimal policy features hype cycles: the sender first exaggerates the value of a technology to attract the adopter,...

We revisit the relationship between market power and firms' investment incentives in a noncooperative differential oligopoly game in which firms sell differentiated goods and invest in advertising to increase the brand equity of their respective goods. The feedback equilibrium obtains under...

We revisit the relationship between market power and firms' investment incentives in a noncooperative differential oligopoly game in which firms sell differentiated goods and invest in advertising to increase the brand equity of their respective goods. The feedback equilibrium obtains under...

Hotelling's famous ‘Principle of Minimum Differentiation' suggests that two firms engaging in spatial competition will decide to locate at the same place. Interpreting spatial competition as modeling product differentiation, firms will thus offer products that are not differentiated and...

We analyse the effects of network externalities in strategic R&D competition. We present a model of two firms competing with R&D investments and prices in a differentiated consumer market. Buyers form firm-specific networks which can be compatible. A high degree of compatibility and large...

Market mechanism may or may not throw up compatibility in markets for systems where network effect arises due to complementarity of component parts of a system. We consider a game, where, in stage 1, the firms decide whether to standardise on a single technological platform or not and at the...

We compare an n-firm Cournot model with a Stackelberg model, where n-firms choose outputs sequentially, in a stochastic demand environment with private information. The expected total output, consumer surplus, and total surplus are lower, while expected price and total profits are higher in...

Alliances between competitors where an established firm provides access to its marketing and distribution channels are an important real-world phenomenon. We analyze a market where an established firm, firm A, produces a product of well-known quality, and a firm with an unknown brand, firm B,...

The abundance of transaction data available on the Internet tends to make information more transparent in electronic marketplaces. In such a transparent environment, it becomes easier for suppliers to obtain information that may allow them to infer their rivals' costs. Is this good news or bad...