In many markets, firms make their products complex through add-ons, thus making them difficult to evaluate and compare. How does this product obfuscation affect competition, sellers’ profits, and buyers’ welfare? We study these questions in a competitive experimental market in which sellers...

In this article, we provide a novel measure of product differentiation by observing consumer search behavior directly. We track individual consumers in a price search engine and generate a measure of distance in product space, based on goods surveyed conjointly within individual search episodes....

In many markets, firms make their products complex through add-on features, thus making them difficult to evaluate and compare. Does this product obfuscation lure buyers into buying overpriced products, and if so, why does competition not eliminate this practice? More generally, under which...