The online infomediary, playing an important role in e-commerce, provides more unbiased and refined product information than usual advertisement provided by online retailers. Interestingly, depending on its capability, the quality of product information is likely to differ. Also, given the fact that it enables consumers to grasp market price dispersion of products, the context of online infomed...

This paper analyzes an infinite-period oligopoly model where consumers incur costs when switching supplier. Every period only a fraction α of consumers considers switching. Firms can price-discriminate between their current customers and consumers who did not buy from the firm in the past period. In this setting, firms set relatively low introductory prices to attract new consumers. Contrary to...

authors thank the HEC Foundation for its financial support, and Shantanu Sutta and Gilles Laurent for their comments on a previous draft. 2 Abstract Reference price research suggests that consumers memorize and recall price information when selecting brands for frequently purchased products. In this study, we show that previous price-knowledge surveys provided imperfect estimates of reference p...

This experimental study examines whether the content of information and the timing of its dissemination affects firms’ market power. We construct laboratory markets that capture the key features of a price-setting, differentiated goods, duopoly model analyzed by Anderson and Renault (2000). Consumers must typically incur a search cost in order to obtain any information, but a fraction of the co...

According to the conventional theory, rebates are but one of many ways to price discriminate among consumers. The firm sells at the shelf price to those willing to pay more for the product and at a lower, rebated price, to those willing to pay less, achieving the necessary separation by relying on the higher costs of redeeming rebates of high willingness-to-pay consumers. This theory, however, ...