IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/bla/econom/v79y2012i314p209-225.html

Spurious Complexity and Common Standards in Markets for Consumer Goods

Author

Listed:
  • Alexia Gaudeul
  • Robert Sugden

Abstract

Behavioural and industrial economists have argued that, because of cognitive limitations, consumers are liable to make sub-optimal choices in complex decision problems. Firms can exploit these limitations by introducing spurious complexity into tariff structures, weakening price competition. This paper models a countervailing force. Consumers’ choice problems are simplified if competing firms follow common conventions about tariff structures. Because such a ‘common standard’ promotes price competition, a firm’s use of it signals that its products offer value for money. If consumers recognize this effect, there can be a stable equilibrium in which firms use common standards and set competitive prices.
(This abstract was borrowed from another version of this item.)

Suggested Citation

  • Alexia Gaudeul & Robert Sugden, 2012. "Spurious Complexity and Common Standards in Markets for Consumer Goods," Economica, London School of Economics and Political Science, vol. 79(314), pages 209-225, April.
    • Handle: RePEc:bla:econom:v:79:y:2012:i:314:p:209-225
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1111/
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to look for a different version below or

    for a different version of it.

    Other versions of this item:

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Robert Sugden & Jiwei Zheng, 2018. "Do Consumers Take Advantage of Common Pricing Standards? An Experimental Investigation," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 64(5), pages 2126-2143, May.
    2. Ioana Chioveanu & Jidong Zhou, 2013. "Price Competition with Consumer Confusion," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 59(11), pages 2450-2469, November.
    3. Paolo Crosetto & Alexia Gaudeul, 2011. "Do consumers prefer offers that are easy to compare? An experimental investigation," Jena Economics Research Papers 2011-044, Friedrich-Schiller-University Jena.
    4. Michael Grubb, 2015. "Failing to Choose the Best Price: Theory, Evidence, and Policy," Review of Industrial Organization, Springer;The Industrial Organization Society, vol. 47(3), pages 303-340, November.
    5. Xue, Lian & Sitzia, Stefania & Turocy, Theodore L., 2017. "Mathematics self-confidence and the “prepayment effect” in riskless choices," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 135(C), pages 239-250.
    6. Lunn, Pete & Somerville, Jason J., 2015. "Surplus Identification with Non-Linear Returns," Papers WP522, Economic and Social Research Institute (ESRI).
    7. Crosetto, P. & Gaudeul, A., 2014. "Choosing whether to compete: Price and format competition with consumer confusion," Working Papers 2014-08, Grenoble Applied Economics Laboratory (GAEL).
    8. Wisnicki, Bartlomiej, 2022. "Consumer inertia fosters product quality," Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Economics (formerly The Journal of Socio-Economics), Elsevier, vol. 96(C).
    9. Crosetto, Paolo & Gaudeul, Alexia, 2012. "Do consumers prefer offers that are easy to compare? An experimental investigation," MPRA Paper 41462, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    10. Ernst Fehr & Keyu Wu, 2021. "Obfuscation in competitive markets," ECON - Working Papers 391, Department of Economics - University of Zurich, revised Feb 2023.
    11. Bienenstock Sophie, 2018. "Utility Misperception in a Vertically Differentiated Duopoly," Review of Law & Economics, De Gruyter, vol. 14(3), pages 1-43, November.
    12. Paolo Crosetto & Alexia Gaudeul, 2017. "Choosing not to compete: Can firms maintain high prices by confusing consumers?," Journal of Economics & Management Strategy, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 26(4), pages 897-922, December.

    More about this item

    JEL classification:

    • D83 - Microeconomics - - Information, Knowledge, and Uncertainty - - - Search; Learning; Information and Knowledge; Communication; Belief; Unawareness
    • L13 - Industrial Organization - - Market Structure, Firm Strategy, and Market Performance - - - Oligopoly and Other Imperfect Markets
    • L15 - Industrial Organization - - Market Structure, Firm Strategy, and Market Performance - - - Information and Product Quality
    • L51 - Industrial Organization - - Regulation and Industrial Policy - - - Economics of Regulation

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:bla:econom:v:79:y:2012:i:314:p:209-225. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Wiley Content Delivery (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/lsepsuk.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.