We investigate the equilibrium relationship between product quality and word-of-mouth communication. Specifically, we ask whether firms should optimally produce "better" products when consumers are more likely to exchange information? The critical moderating factor in our model is the nature of...

In the past decade, we have seen a certain convergence between politics and marketing, in sometimes unexpected ways. Political campaigns now routinely use marketing tools to persuade voters. Brands, on the other hand, are engaging with increasing likelihood with explicitly-political movements of...

We investigate how competition for reputation among consumers can impact the effectiveness of firm interventions. In situations where the firm attempts to intervene to change consumer behavior (e.g., advertising, policy guidelines, legal threats), the consumer's response may depend not only on...

In this paper, we ask when will a firm earn more profits from selling the attention of its customers to advertisers than from selling the underlying product itself. In other words, when will a firm become an advertising "medium"? We investigate this decision as a function of the intensity and...