It is increasingly observable that competitors in different industries share customer data, which can be used for targeted pricing. We propose a modified Hotelling model with two-dimensional consumer heterogeneity to analyze the incentives for such sharing and its ensuing welfare effects. We...

I examine how the increasing ability of firms to target their advertisements to particular individuals influences market outcomes when consumers have access to advertising avoidance tools. While firms generally benefit from increased targeting, consumers need not. I also show that there may be...

At an annual cost of roughly $7 billion nationally, remedial coursework is one of the single largest interventions intended to improve outcomes for underprepared college students. But like a costly medical treatment with non-trivial side effects, the value of remediation overall depends upon...

Many of the research tools used by sophisticated consumer marketing companies for new product development fall into the broad category referred to as 'market segmentation.' Recently some of these segmentation techniques have come under considerable fire. In this article we will design a...

In this paper, we consider two firms diffusing incompatible technologies and their decision of consumer targeting. The technology adoption is made in two steps. First, once the firms sell their products to their respective targeted consumer, the technology is diffused successively by...

Fanboys. Pork dorks. Tech nerds. These consumers have a lot in common: they care a lot about a specific brand, product, or market; they pursue their passions with fervor; and they spend a lot of money in the process. They're superconsumers. Superconsumers are everywhere, and they span...