Chapter 4. Empirical search and consideration sets

This chapter provides an overview of the recent and growing econometric literature studying how consumers search for products. We begin with a brief review of theoretical models of search that have been influential in guiding empirical work. We then discuss the marketing literature on consideration sets and early econometric literature on consumer search, leading up to more recent work that combines the two approaches by formulating search as the process through which consumers form consideration sets. The recent literature also offers econometric tests between search methods. We conclude with a discussion of current and potential future directions for work in this area, which we expect to be greatly enriched by the availability of large data sets containing granular information on consumer search behavior across a variety of online and offline contexts.