We focus on four important features of mobile targeting. First, consumers' real-time locations are known to sellers. Second, location is not the only factor determining how responsive consumers are to discounts. Other factors such as age, income and occupation play a role, which are imperfectly...

A coarse certification provides simple, but incomplete information about quality. Its main rationale is to help consumers trade off dimensions of quality that are complex and lack salience. In imperfectly competitive markets, it may induce excess bunching at the certification requirement, crowd...

We review the economics of superstars, originally developed for stars in traditional media, and discuss whether they are applicable for the (allegedly) novel phenomenon of stars in social media (influencer, micro-celebrities). Moreover, we analyse potentially new factors for creating social...

In this paper, we consider a duopoly model where two firms sell two differentiated products and there is a network externality between either carriers or machines. We derive the equilibria of these games and illustrate the effects of a change in quality on the equilibrium quantity of each good....

We consider cannibalization in a duopoly model in which firms with diffrent costs supply two vertically differentiated products in the same market. We find that an increase in the difference in quality between the two goods or a decrease in the marginal cost of the high-quality goods leads to...

In this paper, we consider and propose a new duopoly model of cannibalization in which firms produce and sell two vertically differentiated products in the same market. We show that each firm produces the high-quality good more (less) than the low-quality good if the upper limit of taste of...

In a real oligopoly, firms often supply multiple products differentiated by quality in the same market. To examine why they do so, we consider a duopoly model in which firms can choose between supplying two vertically differentiated products and selling a single product in the same market. By...

This paper studies welfare consequences of consumer-side market transparency with endogenous entry of firms. Different from most studies, we consider the unique symmetric entry equilibrium, which is in mixed strategies. We identify two effects of market transparency on welfare: a competition...

As online information availability for products and services is increasing and as buyers engage in more online search prior to purchase decisions, it is becoming more important for firms to know when to invest to reduce buyer uncertainty. This article argues that today's firms should view...

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...