Dynamic competition in deceptive markets

In many deceptive markets, firms design contracts to exploit mistakes of naive consumers. These contracts also attract less profitable sophisticated consumers. I study such markets when firms compete repeatedly and gather usage data about their customers which is informative about the likelihood of a customer being sophisticated. I show in a benchmark model that firms do not benefit from private information in this setting when all consumers are rational. I find that in sharp contrast to a model with only rational consumers, this customer information mitigates competition and is of great value to its owner despite intense competition. I discuss several implications of the value of customer information on naiveté. Private information on customers’ sophistication induces profits that are bell-shaped in the share of naive consumers. Firms prefer an even mix of both customer types. I also show that if firms can educate (some) naives about hidden fees, competition is already mitigated when firms compete for customers with initially symmetric information. I analyze a policy that discloses customer information to all firms and thereby increases consumer surplus. I discuss how the UK governments’ midata program might induce crucial aspects of this policy, and illustrate the obustness of results through several extensions.