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Author Info
Michael R. Baye (Kelley School of Business, Indiana University)
John Morgan (Haas School of Business & Department of Economics, UC Berkeley)

Additional information is available for the following registered author(s):

Abstract

We model a homogeneous product environment where identical e-retailers endogenously engage in both brand advertising (to create loyal customers) and price advertising (to attract 'shoppers'). Our analysis allows for 'cross-channel' effects; indeed, we show that price advertising is a substitute for brand advertising. In contrast to models where loyalty is exogenous, these crosschannel effects lead to a continuum of symmetric equilibria; however, the set of equilibria converges to a unique equilibrium as the number of potential e-retailers grows arbitrarily large. Price dispersion is a key feature of all of these equilibria, including the limit equilibrium. While each firm finds it optimal to advertise its brand in an attempt to 'grow' its base of loyal customers, in equilibrium, branding (1) reduces firm profits, (2) increases prices paid by loyals and shoppers, and (3) adversely affects gatekeepers operating price comparison sites. Branding also tightens the range of prices and reduces the value of the price information provided by a comparison site. Using data from a price comparison site, we test several predictions of the model.

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File URL: http://129.3.20.41/eps/mic/papers/0504/0504004.pdf
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Publisher Info
Paper provided by EconWPA in its series Microeconomics with number 0504004.

Download reference. The following formats are available: HTML (with abstract), plain text (with abstract), BibTeX, RIS (EndNote, RefMan, ProCite), ReDIF
Length: 53 pages
Date of creation: 14 Apr 2005
Date of revision:
Handle: RePEc:wpa:wuwpmi:0504004

Note: Type of Document - pdf; pages: 53
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Web page: http://129.3.20.41

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Related research
Keywords: Price dispersion;

Find related papers by JEL classification:
D4 - Microeconomics - - Market Structure and Pricing
D8 - Microeconomics - - Information, Knowledge, and Uncertainty
M3 - Business Administration and Business Economics; Marketing; Accounting - - Marketing and Advertising
L13 - Industrial Organization - - Market Structure, Firm Strategy, and Market Performance - - - Oligopoly and Other Imperfect Markets

This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

References listed on IDEAS
Please report citation or reference errors to , or , if you are the registered author of the cited work, log in to your RePEc Author Service profile, click on "citations" and make appropriate adjustments.:
  1. Michael R. Baye & John Morgan & Patrick Scholten, 2004. "Price Dispersion In The Small And In The Large: Evidence From An Internet Price Comparison Site," Journal of Industrial Economics, Blackwell Publishing, vol. 52(4), pages 463-496, December. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
    Other versions:
  2. Banerjee Bibek & Kovenock Dan, 1995. "Localized and Non-Localized Competition in the Presence of Consumer Lock-in," IIMA Working Papers 1286, Indian Institute of Management Ahmedabad, Research and Publication Department.
  3. Michael R. Baye & John Morgan & Patrick Scholten, 2004. "Temporal Price Dispersion: Evidence from an Online Consumer Electronics Market," Working Papers 2004-04, Indiana University, Kelley School of Business, Department of Business Economics and Public Policy. [Downloadable!]
  4. Michael R. Baye & John Morgan, 2004. "Price Dispersion in the Lab and on the Internet: Theory and Evidence," Working Papers 2004-02, Indiana University, Kelley School of Business, Department of Business Economics and Public Policy. [Downloadable!]
    Other versions:
  5. Shilony, Yuval, 1977. "Mixed pricing in oligopoly," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 14(2), pages 373-388, April. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
  6. Karen Clay & Ramayya Krishnan & Eric Wolff, 2001. "Prices and Price Dispersion on the Web: Evidence from the Online Book Industry," NBER Working Papers 8271, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
    Other versions:
  7. Michael R. Baye & John Morgan, 2001. "Information Gatekeepers on the Internet and the Competitiveness of Homogeneous Product Markets," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 91(3), pages 454-474, June. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
  8. Glazer, Amihai & Konrad, Kai A., 1999. "Taxation of rent-seeking activities," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 72(1), pages 61-72, April. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
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  9. Glenn Ellison & Sara Fisher Ellison, 2004. "Search, Obfuscation, and Price Elasticities on the Internet," NBER Working Papers 10570, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
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  10. Cason, Timothy N. & Friedman, Daniel, 2003. "Buyer search and price dispersion: a laboratory study," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 112(2), pages 232-260, October. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
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  11. Austan Goolsbee & Judith Chevalier, 2002. "Measuring Prices and Price Competition Online: Amazon and Barnes and Noble," NBER Working Papers 9085, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
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  12. Varian, Hal R, 1980. "A Model of Sales," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 70(4), pages 651-59, September. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
  13. Stegeman, Mark, 1991. "Advertising in Competitive Markets," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 81(1), pages 210-23, March. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
  14. Michael Smith & Erik Brynjolfsson, 1999. "Frictionless Commerce? A Comparison of Internet and Conventional Retailers," Computing in Economics and Finance 1999 1022, Society for Computational Economics.
  15. Jeffrey R. Brown & Austan Goolsbee, 2002. "Does the Internet Make Markets More Competitive? Evidence from the Life Insurance Industry," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 110(3), pages 481-507, June. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
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  16. Narasimhan, Chakravarthi, 1988. "Competitive Promotional Strategies," Journal of Business, University of Chicago Press, vol. 61(4), pages 427-49, October. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
  17. Hong, Pilky & McAfee, R. Preston & Nayyar, Ashish, 2002. "Equilibrium Price Dispersion with Consumer Inventories," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 105(2), pages 503-517, August. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
  18. Kathy Baylis & Jeffrey Perloff, 2002. "Price Dispersion on the Internet: Good Firms and Bad Firms," Review of Industrial Organization, Springer, vol. 21(3), pages 305-324, November. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
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  19. Maarten C. W. Janssen & José Luis Moraga-González, 2004. "Strategic Pricing, Consumer Search and the Number of Firms," Review of Economic Studies, Blackwell Publishing, vol. 71(4), pages 1089-1118, October. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
  20. Janssen, Maarten & Rasmusen, Eric, 2002. "Bertrand Competition under Uncertainty," Journal of Industrial Economics, Blackwell Publishing, vol. 50(1), pages 11-21, March. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
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  21. Caillaud, Bernard & Jullien, Bruno, 2001. "Competing cybermediaries," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 45(4-6), pages 797-808, May. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
  22. Caillaud, Bernard & Jullien, Bruno, 2003. " Chicken & Egg: Competition among Intermediation Service Providers," RAND Journal of Economics, The RAND Corporation, vol. 34(2), pages 309-28, Summer.
  23. Roy, Santanu, 2000. "Strategic segmentation of a market," International Journal of Industrial Organization, Elsevier, vol. 18(8), pages 1279-1290, December. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
  24. Whitney K. Newey & Kenneth D. West, 1986. "A Simple, Positive Semi-Definite, Heteroskedasticity and AutocorrelationConsistent Covariance Matrix," NBER Technical Working Papers 0055, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
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  25. Robert, Jacques & Stahl, Dale O, II, 1993. "Informative Price Advertising in a Sequential Search Model," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 61(3), pages 657-86, May. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
  26. Morton, Fiona Scott & Zettelmeyer, Florian & Silva-Risso, Jorge, 2001. "Internet Car Retailing," Journal of Industrial Economics, Blackwell Publishing, vol. 49(4), pages 501-19, December. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
  27. Nitzan, Shmuel, 1994. "Modelling rent-seeking contests," European Journal of Political Economy, Elsevier, vol. 10(1), pages 41-60, May. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
  28. Rosenthal, Robert W, 1980. "A Model in Which an Increase in the Number of Sellers Leads to a Higher Price," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 48(6), pages 1575-79, September. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
  29. Stahl II Dale O., 1994. "Oligopolistic Pricing and Advertising," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 64(1), pages 162-177, October. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
  30. Dufwenberg, Martin & Gneezy, Uri, 2000. "Price competition and market concentration: an experimental study," International Journal of Industrial Organization, Elsevier, vol. 18(1), pages 7-22, January. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
  31. Dana, James D, Jr, 1994. "Learning in an Equilibrium Search Model," International Economic Review, Department of Economics, University of Pennsylvania and Osaka University Institute of Social and Economic Research Association, vol. 35(3), pages 745-71, August. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
    Other versions:
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