In this paper we study the impact of search engine optimization (SEO) on the competition between advertisers for organic and sponsored search results. We find that a positive level of search engine optimization may improve the search engine’s ranking quality and thus the satisfaction of its...

Standard search models assume that consumers actively decide on the order, identity, and number of products they search. We document that online, a large fraction of searches happen in a more passive manner, with consumers merely reacting to online advertisements that do not allow them to choose...

Why do consumers revisit previously searched products (“search revisits”) before making a purchase decision? Using a detailed click-stream data set from a popular hotel meta-search engine that uniquely identifies the information (photos, reviews, prices etc.) consumers obtained on every...

Firms compete by choosing both a price and a design from a family of designs that can be represented as demand rotations. Consumers engage in costly sequential search among firms. Each time a consumer pays a search cost he observes a new offering. An offering consists of a price quote and a new...

We develop a probit choice model under optimal sequential search and apply it to the study of aggregate demand of consumer durable goods. In our joint model of search and choice, we derive a semi-closed form expression for the probability of choice that obeys the full set of restrictions imposed...

Do the choices of consumers who search for a product's best price exhibit risk neutral, risk averse or loss averse risk attitudes? We study how in a problem of sequential search with costless recall the relation between a consumer's willingness to pay for continued search and the level of price...

We study the estimation of preference heterogeneity in markets where consumers engage in costly search to learn product characteristics. Costly search amplifies the way consumer preferences translate into purchase probabilities, generating a seemingly large degree of preference heterogeneity. We...

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,...

Hyper-media, owing to its ability to embed and link to information from other sources, has become an important modality for consuming news and information. Yet there remains a dearth of empirical research seeking to explain and forecast consumer behavior in this context. We develop a structural...

When shopping online, consumers can reach a product detail page via multiple routes: by going through a category page (e.g., women's shoes), by directly typing the product name in the search field (e.g., Nike Women's Air Max), by going through a sales page (e.g., the shoes sale page), etc....