Cost synergies are an explicitly recognized justification for a two-firm merger, and empirical techniques are now widely used to assess the impact of cost-reducing mergers on prices and welfare in the post-merger market. We show that if the merger occurs in a vertically product differentiated...

When advertising is a value-enhancing complement to consumption [Becker and Murphy (1993)], customization can permit firms to discriminate in advertising strategies, rather than in pricing. We investigate customized complementary advertising in a spatial model of horizontal differentiation. We...

We examine the impact of targeted advertising on competition and welfare when advertising directly affects the consumer’s utility, as in Becker and Murphy (1993). We show that as targeted advertising becomes less costly, market concentration and prices increase. Yet consumer welfare also...