Alliances between competitors where an established firm provides access to its marketing and distribution channels are an important real-world phenomenon. We analyze a market where an established firm, firm A, produces a product of well-known quality, and a firm with an unknown brand, firm B,...

The recent developments in information technology (IT) have enabled firms to employ personalized pricing. Should all firms employ personalized pricing even though the adaptation costs of such pricing strategies are not high? This paper theoretically demonstrates a situation in which all firms do...

Competition in product design is considered in the context of a circular duopoly model where each duopolist can choose either a standardized design or a customized version of its product. We examine the circumstances that lead to multiple equilibria, and characterize the type of equilibrium as a...

In this paper, we study the rational for an incumbent to launch a second brand when facing potential entry in a market with quality differentiated products and a fringe producer. Depending on market size, costs for a second brand and a potential entrant’s setup cost the incumbent might use a...

Using a model of sequential search, we show that announcements to price-match raise prices by altering consumer search behavior. First, price-matching diminishes firms' incentives to lower prices to attract consumers who have no search costs. Second, for consumers with positive search costs,...

Consumers have bounded perception and treat similar goods as homogeneous. The interaction between this bias and the structure of firms is studied in a vertically differentiated duopoly with market entry. With fixed costs of quality, natural monopoly and entry deterrence occurs at lower entry...

We analyze two- and three-dimensional variants of Hotelling's model of differentiated products. In our setup, consumers can place different importance on each product attribute; this is measured by a weight in the disutility of distance in each dimension. Two firms play a two-stage game; they...

We analyze two- and three-dimensional variants of Hotelling's model of differentiated products. In our setup, consumers can place different importance on each product attribute; this is measured by a weight in the disutility of distance in each dimension. Two firms play a two-stage game; they...

This paper reports a duopoly market experiment that examines the effects of price complexity on market prices. In my experimental posted-offer markets, each seller offers an identical good to buyers with homogeneous preferences. First, sellers simultaneously decide on the price and the tariff...

We employ a price setting duopoly experiment to examine whether buyer confusion increases market prices. Each seller offers a good to buyers who have homogeneous preferences. Sellers decide on the number of attributes of their good and set prices. The number of attributes bears no cost to the...