An examination of brand prices in several categories reveals that the distribution of prices is multimodal, with firms offering shallow and deep discounts. Another interesting feature of these distributions is that they may have holes in the interior of the support. These pricing distributions...

Price discrimination is generally thought to improve firm profits by allowing firms to extract more consumer surplus. In competition, however, price discrimination may also be costly to the firm because restrictive incentive compatibility conditions may allow the competing firm to gain market...

Jain (Jain, S. 2012. Marketing of vice goods: A strategic analysis of the package size decision. Marketing Sci. 31(1) 36-51) examines the impact of consumers' self-control problem on the equilibrium package sizes offered by firms marketing vice goods. This series of discussions offers...

Daily deal websites help small local merchants to attract new consumers. A strategy adopted by some websites is to continually track and display the number of deals sold by a merchant. We investigate the strategic implications of displaying deal sales and the website's incentive to implement...

It is increasingly common for a website, often referred to as a cash back site, to inform and enable consumers to avail of discounts at competing retail stores. Thus, consumers who visit a cash back site are able to take advantage of discounts at retail stores that are not available unless they...

Increased sales due to promotions could be at the expense of competitors: such sales come from consumers with relatively weak brand preferences. However, increased sales from brand loyal consumers could well cannibalize sales of the promoted brand. An unintended consequence of promotions is that...