Digital technology is the representation of information in bits, reducing the costs of collecting, storing, and parsing customer data. This has led to a reduction of five costs: Search costs, replication costs, transportation costs, tracking costs, and verification costs. In this article, we...

In markets with search frictions, consumers can acquire information about goods either through costly search or from friends via word-of-mouth (WOM) communication. How do sellers’ market power react to a very large increase in the number of consumers’ friends with whom they engage in WOM?...

Consumers can acquire information through their own search efforts or through their social network. Information diffusion via word-of-mouth communication leads to some consumers free-riding on their “friends” and less information acquisition via active search. Free-riding also has an...