Data Brokers Co-Opetition

Data brokers share consumer data with rivals and, at the same time, compete withthem for selling. We propose a “co-opetition” game of data brokers and characterisetheir optimal strategies. When data are “sub-additive” with the merged value netof the merging cost being lower than the sum of the values of individual datasets,data brokers are more likely to share their data and sell them jointly. When data are“super-additive”, with the merged value being greater than the sum of the individualdatasets, competition emerges more often. Finally, data sharing is more likely whendata brokers are more efficient at merging datasets than data buyers.