Informative Advertisement of Partial Compatible Products
Product design and advertisement strategy have been theoretically studied as separate firms decisions. In the present paper, we look at the link between advertisement and product design and we analyze how firms' advertising decisions influence the market effect of product design. We consider a model of informative advertisement where two firms produce a bundle of complementary products which are partially compatible. A product design with more compatible components is associated with a larger intensity of advertisement. Higher compatibility reduces competition between firms, which incentivizes them to give factual information about their bundle. Like Matutes and Regibeau (1988), industry profit and total welfare is maximized with full product compatibility. However, contrary to them, we obtain that consumer surplus is not monotone with the level of product compatibility and its maximum is attained with partial compatibility. Moreover, because consumer surplus not only depends on the equilibrium prices but also on the intensity of advertisement, we find that for intermediate equilibrium levels of advertising, consumers prefer fully compatible components rather than full incompatibility. As a result, a more compatible product design benefits all the agents in the economy.
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| Date of creation: | 26 Mar 2014 |
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| Handle: | RePEc:tse:wpaper:28044 |
| Contact details of provider: | Phone: (+33) 5 61 12 86 23 Web page: http://www.tse-fr.eu/ More information through EDIRC
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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.:
- Zhijun Chen & Patrick Rey, 2010.
"Loss Leading as an Exploitative Practice,"
Working Papers
hal-00540724, HAL.
- Zhijun Chen & Patrick Rey, 2012. "Loss Leading as an Exploitative Practice," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 102(7), pages 3462-82, December.
- Rey, Patrick & Chen, Zhijun, 2010. "Loss Leading as an Exploitative Practice," IDEI Working Papers 658, Institut d'Économie Industrielle (IDEI), Toulouse, revised Dec 2011.
- Rey, Patrick & Chen, Zhijun, 2010. "Loss Leading as an Exploitative Practice," TSE Working Papers 10-218, Toulouse School of Economics (TSE), revised Dec 2011.
- Glenn Ellison, 2005. "A Model of Add-On Pricing," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, Oxford University Press, vol. 120(2), pages 585-637.
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