This paper investigates discount pricing, the common marketing practice whereby a price is listed as a discount from an earlier, or regular, price.  We discuss two reasons why a discounted price - as opposed to a mearly low price - can make a rational consumer more willing to purchase the...

We investigate the marketing practice of framing a price as a discount from an earlier price. We discuss two reasons why a discounted price---rather than a merely low price---can make a consumer more willing to purchase. First, a high initial price can indicate the product is high quality....

Google's new “Interest Based Advertising” (IBA) program represents the company's first foray into what is generally called “Online Behavioral Advertising”: In order to deliver more relevant advertising, Google will begin tailoring ads delivered through AdSense on the Google Content...

In recent years, federal policymakers, state legislators, and state Attorneys General have all shown renewed interest in regulating commercial advertising and marketing. Several new regulatory initiatives are being proposed, or are already underway, that could severely curtail or restrict...

Should market prices include or exclude taxes? Market prices in U.S. do not include sales taxes and similarly prices in Canada are tax-exclusive. But in many other countries exclusion of taxes is considered misleading, and thus consumer protection laws regulate tax-inclusive pricing. This paper...

Since the fall of 2008, a debate has raged in Washington over "targeted online advertising," shorthand for the customization of Internet ads to match the interests of users. Not only are these ads more relevant and therefore less annoying to Internet users than untargeted ads, they are more...

The Federal Trade Commission should avoid laying the groundwork for more onerous regulation of the online advertising marketplace, which could become the equivalent of a disastrous industrial policy for the Internet and choke resources needed to fuel e-commerce and online free speech going...

We stand at the dawn of the Eco-mark Era – a period in which green branding, advertising environmentally friendly products and services, and touting sustainable business practices will be pervasive and profitable. However, with the rise of green branding comes the temptation of greenwashing...

We examine how and why consumers engage in retributional acts directed towards brands that are perceived as harmful. Consumers are shown to lie, cheat, and steal as they attribute lower moral worth to harmful brands and this effect is shown to persist in the absence of any attributable brand...

Merchant Authorized Consumer Cash Substitutes (MACCS) have existed in one form or another for hundreds of years although without a generic name. At nineteenth century American railroad construction sites far from established towns, companies paid employees with “scrip.” Coca Cola, beginning...