Firms signal high quality through high prices even if the market structure is highly competitive and price competition … is severe. In a symmetric Bertrand oligopoly where products may differ only in their quality, production cost is … increasing in quality and the quality of each firm’s product is private information (not known to consumers or to other firms …

We consider an oligopolistic market where firms compete in price and quality and where consumers are heterogeneous in … knowledge: some consumers know both the prices and quality of the products offered, some know only the prices and some know …-inefficiency of the price/quality offers. But, better price/quality combinations are signalled with lower prices in one type and with …

conformity. In equilibrium, both quality and cost leaders choose higher advertising intensities and charge higher prices than …This paper analyzes persuasive advertising and pricing in oligopoly if firms sell differentiated products and consumers … that the demand-enhancing effect of persuasive advertising varies across consumers and increases in the average degree of …

conformity. In equilibrium, both quality and cost leaders choose higher advertising intensities and charge higher prices than … asymmetries between firms. -- advertising ; social attitude ; consumption externality ; quality …This paper analyzes persuasive advertising and pricing in oligopoly if firms sell differentiated products and consumers …

In a two-firm model where each firm sells a high-quality and a low-quality version of a product, customers differ with … respect to their brand preferences and their attitudes towards quality. We show that the standard result of quality …-independent markups crucially depends on the assumption that the customers' valuation of quality is identical across firms. Once we relax …

We investigate how firms' incentives to acquire customer data for targeted offers depend on its quality. A two … of its quality. This increases profits but harms consumers. When consumers are relatively differentiated in flexibility …, data acquisition incentives depend on its quality. Only if the data is sufficiently precise, both firms acquire it and …

flexibility is imperfect. We use three collusive schemes to analyze the impact of the improvement in the quality of customer … improvement in data quality it is more difficult to sustain collusion. …