We model the commercial World Wide Web as a directed graph that emerges as the equilibrium of a game in which utility maximizing websites purchase (advertising) in-links from each other while also setting the price of these links. In equilibrium, higher content sites tend to purchase more...

Consumers cannot purchase a prescription drug without a prescription from a physician, yet many prescription drugs are promoted to consumers with the help of direct-to-consumer (DTC) advertising. In this paper, we propose and test a competitive model of DTC advertising. We find that the brand...

With increasing fragmentation of media markets and recent advances in technology, loss of advertising effectiveness has been a great concern for marketers. For consumers, the digital video recorder (DVR) offers the possibility to fast-forward through live programming. Whereas the DVR thus...

This study attempts to answer a basic customer management dilemma facing firms: when should the firm use behavior-based pricing (BBP) to discriminate between its own and competitors' customers in a competitive market? If BBP is profitable, when should the firm offer a lower price to its own...

In this study, we examine firms' incentive to offer customized products in addition to their standard products in a competitive environment. We offer several key insights. First, we delineate market conditions in which firms will (will not) offer customized products in addition to their standard...

We consider a problem at the interface of auctions and bundling. Our revenue-maximizing seller seeking to auction one unit each of two complements or substitutes in the best-of-three formats: the auction of the bundle, separate auctions of the individual items, and a combinatorial auction. We...

Online retailing boasts two major advantages: convenience of home shopping and easy access to information. In this paper, I argue that these two features have important implications for retailers' channel and advertising decisions. Two major questions are addressed: When should a conventional...

This paper shows that the analysis of Liu et al. (2004) contains a substantive error—the asserted pure-strategy Nash equilibrium leading to their Theorems 1 and 2 is really not an equilibrium. We show that in their model, either pure-strategy Nash equilibria do not exist or, unlike their...

In a model of vertical differentiation, the principal concern of this paper is to identify sufficient conditions for producing a higher- or lower-quality good to be more profitable (in terms of profits and profit margin). Our basic model considers a scenario where the firms' quality levels are...

In this paper we examine the issue of balancing media advertising (pull strategy) and trade promotions (push strategy) for manufacturers of consumer packaged goods utilizing a three-stage game theoretic analysis and test model's implications with scanner panel data. We develop a model of two...