Excessive Competition on Headline Prices

In a variety of purchasing situations, consumers may focus primarily on headline prices, ignoring the full costs associated with acquiring and maintaining a product or service contract. Even when this is the case, it is widely believed that intense competition would adequately protect consumers (the so-called "waterbed effect"). However, in a tractable model of imperfect competition and vertical differentiation, we show that when consumers exhibit context-dependent preferences, competition may rather exacerbate their and society's harm. Then, consumer protection policy must sufficiently constrain hidden costs and fees so that competition, along with high-quality firms' incentives to educate consumers, can restore efficiency.