IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/indorg/v29y2011i1p14-22.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Buyer confusion and market prices

Author

Listed:
  • KalaycI, Kenan
  • Potters, Jan

Abstract

We employ a price setting duopoly experiment to examine whether buyer confusion increases market prices. Each seller offers a good to buyers who have homogeneous preferences. Sellers decide on the number of attributes of their good and set prices. The number of attributes bears no cost to the sellers and does not affect the value of the good to the buyers but adds complexity to buyers' evaluation of the goods. The experimental results indicate that the buyers make more suboptimal choices and that prices are higher when the number of attributes of the goods is higher. Moreover, prices and profits are higher than those in a benchmark treatment with perfectly rational (robot) buyers.

Suggested Citation

  • KalaycI, Kenan & Potters, Jan, 2011. "Buyer confusion and market prices," International Journal of Industrial Organization, Elsevier, vol. 29(1), pages 14-22, January.
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:indorg:v:29:y:2011:i:1:p:14-22
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0167-7187(10)00094-9
    Download Restriction: Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Jeffrey M. Perloff & Steven C. Salop, 1985. "Equilibrium with Product Differentiation," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 52(1), pages 107-120.
    2. 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.
    3. Raj Chetty & Adam Looney & Kory Kroft, 2009. "Salience and Taxation: Theory and Evidence," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 99(4), pages 1145-1177, September.
    4. Stefano DellaVigna, 2009. "Psychology and Economics: Evidence from the Field," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 47(2), pages 315-372, June.
    5. James J. Choi & David Laibson & Brigitte C. Madrian, 2010. "Why Does the Law of One Price Fail? An Experiment on Index Mutual Funds," Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 23(4), pages 1405-1432, April.
    6. Chris M. Wilson & Catherine Waddams Price, 2010. "Do consumers switch to the best supplier?," Oxford Economic Papers, Oxford University Press, vol. 62(4), pages 647-668, October.
    7. Hossain Tanjim & Morgan John, 2006. "...Plus Shipping and Handling: Revenue (Non) Equivalence in Field Experiments on eBay," The B.E. Journal of Economic Analysis & Policy, De Gruyter, vol. 5(2), pages 1-30, January.
    8. Simon P. Anderson & Régis Renault, 2009. "Comparative advertising: disclosing horizontal match information," RAND Journal of Economics, RAND Corporation, vol. 40(3), pages 558-581, September.
    9. Bruttel, Lisa V., 2009. "Group dynamics in experimental studies--The Bertrand Paradox revisited," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 69(1), pages 51-63, January.
    10. Urs Fischbacher, 2007. "z-Tree: Zurich toolbox for ready-made economic experiments," Experimental Economics, Springer;Economic Science Association, vol. 10(2), pages 171-178, June.
    11. Chris M. Wilson & Catherine Waddams Price, 2007. "Do Consumers Switch to the Best Supplier?," Working Paper series, University of East Anglia, Centre for Competition Policy (CCP) 2007-06, Centre for Competition Policy, University of East Anglia, Norwich, UK..
    12. Carlin, Bruce I., 2009. "Strategic price complexity in retail financial markets," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 91(3), pages 278-287, March.
    13. repec:dau:papers:123456789/12478 is not listed on IDEAS
    14. ,, 2006. "Competition over agents with boundedly rational expectations," Theoretical Economics, Econometric Society, vol. 1(2), pages 207-231, June.
    15. Jennifer Brown & Tanjim Hossain & John Morgan, 2010. "Shrouded Attributes and Information Suppression: Evidence from the Field," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 125(2), pages 859-876.
    16. Glenn Ellison & Alexander Wolitzky, 2012. "A search cost model of obfuscation," RAND Journal of Economics, RAND Corporation, vol. 43(3), pages 417-441, September.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Wenzel, Tobias & Normann, Hans-Theo, 2015. "Shrouding add-on information: an experimental study," VfS Annual Conference 2015 (Muenster): Economic Development - Theory and Policy 113149, Verein für Socialpolitik / German Economic Association.
    2. Hans‐Theo Normann & Tobias Wenzel, 2019. "Shrouding Add‐On Information: An Experimental Study," Scandinavian Journal of Economics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 121(4), pages 1705-1727, October.
    3. Ioana Chioveanu & Jidong Zhou, 2013. "Price Competition with Consumer Confusion," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 59(11), pages 2450-2469, November.
    4. Chioveanu, Ioana & Zhou, Jidong, 2009. "Price Competition and Consumer Confusion," MPRA Paper 17340, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    5. Yiquan Gu & Tobias Wenzel, 2017. "Consumer confusion, obfuscation and price regulation," Scottish Journal of Political Economy, Scottish Economic Society, vol. 64(2), pages 169-190, May.
    6. Ernst Fehr & Keyu Wu, 2021. "Obfuscation in competitive markets," ECON - Working Papers 391, Department of Economics - University of Zurich, revised Feb 2023.
    7. Paolo Crosetto & Alexia Gaudeul, 2014. "Choosing whether to compete: Price and format competition with consumer confusion," Jena Economics Research Papers 2014-026, Friedrich-Schiller-University Jena.
    8. Gamp, Tobias, 2015. "Search, Differentiated Products, and Obfuscation," VfS Annual Conference 2015 (Muenster): Economic Development - Theory and Policy 112886, Verein für Socialpolitik / German Economic Association.
    9. Ginger Zhe Jin & Michael Luca & Daniel Martin, 2022. "Complex Disclosure," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 68(5), pages 3236-3261, May.
    10. Bennett Chiles, 2021. "Shrouded Prices and Firm Reputation: Evidence from the U.S. Hotel Industry," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 67(2), pages 964-983, February.
    11. Kenan Kalaycı, 2016. "Confusopoly: competition and obfuscation in markets," Experimental Economics, Springer;Economic Science Association, vol. 19(2), pages 299-316, June.
    12. Friesen, Lana & Earl, Peter E., 2015. "Multipart tariffs and bounded rationality: An experimental analysis of mobile phone plan choices," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 116(C), pages 239-253.
    13. 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.
    14. Johannes Voester & Bjoern Ivens & Alexander Leischnig, 2017. "Partitioned pricing: review of the literature and directions for further research," Review of Managerial Science, Springer, vol. 11(4), pages 879-931, October.
    15. Kenan Kalaycı & Marta Serra-Garcia, 2016. "Complexity and biases," Experimental Economics, Springer;Economic Science Association, vol. 19(1), pages 31-50, March.
    16. Yiquan Gu & Tobias Wenzel, 2014. "Strategic Obfuscation and Consumer Protection Policy," Journal of Industrial Economics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 62(4), pages 632-660, December.
    17. Xavier Gabaix, 2017. "Behavioral Inattention," NBER Working Papers 24096, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    18. McGowan, Féidhlim, 2018. "The roaming regulation and the case for applying behavioural industrial organisation to EU competition policy," Papers WP598, Economic and Social Research Institute (ESRI).
    19. Huck, Steffen & Zhou, Jidong, 2011. "Consumer behavioural biases in competition: A survey," MPRA Paper 31794, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    20. Kalaycı, Kenan, 2015. "Price complexity and buyer confusion in markets," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 111(C), pages 154-168.

    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:eee:indorg:v:29:y:2011:i:1:p:14-22. 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.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with 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: Catherine Liu (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.elsevier.com/locate/inca/505551 .

    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.