Competitive Effects of Purchase-Based Targeted Advertising

2012 ◽  
Vol 10 (4) ◽  
pp. 71-84
Author(s):  
Jianqiang Zhang ◽  
Weijun Zhong ◽  
Shue Mei
Keyword(s):  
Social Welfare ◽  
Product Differentiation ◽  
Price Competition ◽  
Consumer Surplus ◽  
Consumer Information ◽  
Competitive Effects ◽  
Targeted Advertising ◽  
Consumer Valuation ◽  
Competitive Environments ◽  
Second Period

This paper develops a two-period sales model to investigate the competitive effects of purchase-based targeted advertising. In the model, two competing firms gain consumer information during the first period sales, which allows them to target advertising based on consumer purchase history. Advertising is assumed to be persuasive in terms of consumer valuation enhancing and product differentiation increasing. The authors find that the firm’s ability to target can damage industry profits, consumer surplus, and even social welfare. The conditions under which targeted advertising is positive or negative are derived, showing that price competition is softened in the second period but intensified in the first. It is suggested that firms under competitive environments cautiously sponsor targeted advertising with appropriate contents.

Purchase-Based Targeted Advertising

2015 ◽  
pp. 171-188
Author(s):  
Jianqiang Zhang ◽  
Weijun Zhong ◽  
Shue Mei
Keyword(s):  
Social Welfare ◽  
Consumer Surplus ◽  
Information Gathering ◽  
Consumer Information ◽  
Competitive Effect ◽  
Competitive Effects ◽  
Targeted Advertising ◽  
Competitive Environments ◽  
Duopoly Model

Purchase-Based Targeted Advertising (PBTA) refers to the advertising that is targeted to an individual based on his or her purchase histories, which is ubiquitous in the age of e-commerce. This chapter examines the competitive effects of PBTA by establishing a two-period duopoly model: the first period consists of the consumer information gathering process while the second is the period where PBTA is embraced. Based on this model, it is found that PBTA may improve or damage industry profits, consumer surplus, as well as social welfare. The conditions under which the competitive effect is positive or negative are derived, showing that whether PBTA is beneficial or detrimental depends on the content of advertising designed by the competing firms. It is suggested that firms under competitive environments cautiously deploy PBTA with appropriate advertising contents.

scholarly journals Competitive Effects of Mass Customization

2012 ◽  
Vol 10 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Oksana Loginova
Keyword(s):  
Product Differentiation ◽  
Mass Customization ◽  
Operations Management ◽  
Price Competition ◽  
Comparative Statics ◽  
Consumer Involvement ◽  
The Other ◽  
Fixed Cost ◽  
Competitive Effects ◽  
Customized Products

Abstract The existing theoretical literature on mass customization maintains that customization reduces product differentiation and intensifies price competition. In contrast, operations management studies argue that customization serves primarily to differentiate a company from its competitors. Interactive involvement of the customer in product design creates an affective relationship with the firm, relaxing price competition. This paper provides a model that incorporates consumer involvement to explain the phenomena described in the operations management literature.Two firms on the Hotelling line compete for a continuum of consumers with heterogeneous brand preferences. An exogenously given fraction of consumers is potentially interested in customization. Consumer benefits from customization are the rewards from a special shopping experience and the value of product customization (a better fitting product); these benefits are higher for consumers located closer to the customizing brand. When a consumer purchases a customized product, he/she incurs waiting costs. Each firm simultaneously decides whether to offer standard products, customized products, or both, and then engage in price competition. I show that customization increases product differentiation, leading to less intense price competition. Depending on the parameter values, in equilibrium either both firms offer customized products, one firm offers customized products and the other standard and customized products, or one firm offers customized products and the other standard products. I perform comparative statics analysis with respect to the fraction of consumers interested in customization, the waiting costs, and the fixed cost of customization.

Endogenous Timing in Vertically-Related Markets

2018 ◽  
Vol 18 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Hong-Ren Din ◽  
Chia-Hung Sun
Keyword(s):  
Social Welfare ◽  
Price Competition ◽  
Consumer Surplus ◽  
The Other ◽  
Endogenous Timing ◽  
Price Strategy ◽  
Quantity Competition ◽  
Sequential Game ◽  
Product Substitutability

Abstract This paper investigates the theory of endogenous timing by taking into account a vertically-related market where an integrated firm competes with a downstream firm. Contrary to the standard results in the literature, we find that both firms play a sequential game in quantity competition and play a simultaneous game in price competition. Under mixed quantity-price competition, the firm choosing a price strategy moves first and the other firm choosing a quantity strategy moves later in equilibrium. Given that the timing of choosing actions is determined endogenously, aggregate profit (consumer surplus) is higher (lower) under price competition than under quantity competition. Lastly, social welfare is higher under quantity competition than under price competition when the degree of product substitutability is relatively low.

Modelling offline expansion strategies of online companies

Kybernetes ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol ahead-of-print (ahead-of-print) ◽  
Author(s):  
Heng Xu ◽  
Xuliang Wu ◽  
Yatian Liu
Keyword(s):  
Social Welfare ◽  
Competition Policy ◽  
Price Competition ◽  
Consumer Surplus ◽  
Optimal Decision ◽  
Content Type ◽  
Expansion Strategy ◽  
Online Retailers ◽  
Fixed Proportion ◽  
Expansion Strategies

Purpose This paper aims to theoretically investigate an online company’s optimal decision on its offline expansion strategy. In the past five years, many large online retailers and internet-based companies such as Amazon, Google, Alibaba, Tencent and JD.com have expanded their offline market but it was observed that they adopted different expansion strategies. Specifically, some of them expand the offline market by acquiring offline retailers, while some do so by purchasing a portion of offline retailer’s stake. This difference leads to a quite different structure in post-expansion market, having an impact on profit, consumer surplus and social welfare. The goal of this paper is to model such expansion strategies in a general way and complete studies on profits and welfare. Design/methodology/approach By constructing a Salop model with two offline retailers and one online company, this paper analyzes the case where the online company can expand its offline market by either acquiring or jointing (e.g. stakeholding) with one offline retailer. The former strategy (named Strategy A) allows the online company to fully control and capture residual claims of the offline retailer. With the adoption of the latter strategy (named Strategy C), on the other hand, the online company can obtain a fixed proportion of its offline partner’s quasi rent. In the price competition, the online company chooses its optimal offline expansion strategy by predicting its profit in the post-expansion market. Findings This paper found that the equilibrium crucially depends on the synergy effect due to online–offline integration, and such synergy also influences both consumer and social welfare. This study shows the various conditions on the synergy that affect an online company moves toward offline markets. Accordingly, this finding can assist online companies with or without retailing business to choose an optimal strategy when expanding offline markets. Moreover, by doing some necessary welfare analysis, this study shows that the online company’s offline expansion is not always benefiting consumers nor be socially desirable, which may shed some lights on the possible competition policy in the case where online companies practice in offline expansion. Originality/value Different from conventional wisdom in online-offline integration, the theory indicates that the offline expectation of online company may not always benefit consumers nor be socially desirable. Moreover, the findings also shed some lights on the possible competition policy in the case where online companies practice in offline expansion.

scholarly journals Shared Manufacturing in A Differentiated Duopoly with Capacity Constraints

2022 ◽  
Author(s):  
Junlong Chen ◽  
Chaoqun Sun ◽  
Jiali Liu
Keyword(s):  
Social Welfare ◽  
Market Share ◽  
Product Differentiation ◽  
Consumer Surplus ◽  
Cournot Competition ◽  
Capacity Constraints ◽  
Excess Capacity ◽  
Stackelberg Competition ◽  
Duopoly Model ◽  
Negative Role

Abstract This study sets up a differentiated duopoly model considering capacity constraints and shared manufacturing, investigates the equilibrium results, examines the effects of product differentiation and capacity constraints in three scenarios, and compares the equilibrium outcomes in three cases under Cournot and Stackelberg competition. We find that capacity constraints affect the relationships among product differentiation, equilibrium results, and the market share of enterprises. Shared manufacturing impacts the degree of excess capacity, profits, consumer surplus, and social welfare; however, it may sometimes play a negative role in alleviating excess capacity. Moreover, Cournot competition is a better choice for enterprises with capacity constraints compared to Stackelberg competition.

scholarly journals Targeted Value-Enhancing Advertising and Price Competition

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lynne Pepall ◽  
Daniel Richards
Keyword(s):  
Price Discrimination ◽  
Price Competition ◽  
Consumer Surplus ◽  
Price Information ◽  
Targeted Advertising ◽  
Consumer Data

AbstractDigital markets provide firms with vast amounts of consumer data. Economists who have explored this phenomenon have focused on how firms use data to implement price discrimination. Targeted advertising in this context transmits different price information to different consumers. However, advertising is itself often valued by consumers, and can be viewed as a complement to the advertised product. Such advertising may also be customized and targeted. We investigate how targeted value-enhancing advertising affects competition. Competing for consumers with targeted advertising leads overall to higher prices and increases consumer surplus but reduces profitability. In certain markets the advertising is inefficiently over-supplied.

scholarly journals Competitive Personalized Pricing

2020 ◽  
Vol 66 (9) ◽  
pp. 4003-4023 ◽  
Author(s):  
Zhijun Chen ◽  
Chongwoo Choe ◽  
Noriaki Matsushima
Keyword(s):  
Social Welfare ◽  
Price Discrimination ◽  
Identity Management ◽  
Consumer Surplus ◽  
Consumer Information ◽  
Deadweight Loss ◽  
Market Segment ◽  
Target Segment ◽  
Price Discriminate

We study a model where each competing firm has a target segment where it has full consumer information and can exercise personalized pricing, and consumers may engage in identity management to bypass the firm’s attempt to price discriminate. In the absence of identity management, more consumer information intensifies competition because firms can effectively defend their turf through targeted personalized offers, thereby setting low public prices offered to nontargeted consumers. But the effect is mitigated when consumers are active in identity management because it raises the firm’s cost of serving nontargeted consumers. When firms have sufficiently large and nonoverlapping target segments, identity management can enable firms to extract full surplus from their targeted consumers through perfect price discrimination. Identity management can also induce firms not to serve consumers who are not targeted by either firm when the commonly nontargeted market segment is small. This results in a deadweight loss. Thus, identity management by consumers can benefit firms and lead to lower consumer surplus and lower social welfare. Our main insight continues to be valid when a fraction of consumers are active in identity management or when there is a cost of identity management. We also discuss the regulatory implications for the use of consumer information by firms as well as the implications for management. This paper was accepted by Juanjuan Zhang, marketing.

scholarly journals Competition in a Variety Seeking Market With Brand Name Awareness

SAGE Open ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 11 (2) ◽  
pp. 215824402110041
Author(s):  
Liyang Xiong ◽  
Honglei Yu ◽  
Zhanqing Wang
Keyword(s):  
Price Competition ◽  
Consumer Surplus ◽  
Service Level ◽  
The Other ◽  
Type Model ◽  
Brand Name ◽  
Variety Seeking ◽  
Seeking Behavior ◽  
Second Period ◽  
Previous Occasion

This article investigates service and price competition in a variety seeking market, with the consideration of brand name awareness on consumers. Variety seeking behavior is modeled as a decrease in the willingness to pay for product purchased on the previous occasion. Under a three-stage Hotelling-type model, we show that variety seeking intensifies the competition when both firms are equally known. However, when one firm is better known than the other, it softens the competition observing the differentiation of equilibrium policies. In addition, variety seeking increases both the price and service gaps to exaggerate market differentiation. Under both scenarios firms adjust the service level in the second period so as to prevent consumers from switching, if keeping prices committed across periods. Furthermore, if consumers on average have a higher propensity to one firm, the variety seeking behavior leads to a higher total profits and a higher consumer surplus.

A price discrimination based Cournot game model for high-speed rail and airline

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-9
Author(s):  
Jinyu Li ◽  
Xuemei Li ◽  
Ning Ma
Keyword(s):  
Social Welfare ◽  
Price Discrimination ◽  
Price Competition ◽  
High Speed ◽  
Consumer Surplus ◽  
High Speed Rail ◽  
Competitive Game ◽  
Cournot Game ◽  
Optimal Pricing Strategy ◽  
Multi Level

This study investigates the competitive game between high-speed rail and airline on price, profit and social welfare, taking into account the airline price discrimination. We build a multi-level price competition pricing Cournot model for high-speed rail and airline to shed light on the HSR-air transport competition impact of pricing discrimination when airline could offer multi-level class seats, and analyze the optimal pricing strategy of airlines and high-speed rail operators and their impact on social welfare. The analytical results demonstrate that: airline price dis-crimination will increase social welfare and reduce consumer surplus, both airfare and airline profit increase as the degree of price discrimination increases welfare. However, HSR fare and profit decreases with the increase of the degree of price discrimination.

Passive Cross-Holding in a Stackelberg Oligopoly

2021 ◽  
Vol 0 (0) ◽  
Author(s):  
Hongkun Ma ◽  
Chenhang Zeng
Keyword(s):  
Social Welfare ◽  
Product Differentiation ◽  
Consumer Surplus ◽  
Stackelberg Leadership ◽  
Convex Costs

Abstract We show that bilateral cross-holding can be profitable for firms with symmetric technologies in a Stackelberg oligopoly. Furthermore, if firms involved in cross-holding obtain a strategic advantage to be the leaders (i.e. Stackelberg leadership through cross-holding), such cross-holding will improve both consumer surplus and social welfare. We also discuss robustness of our main results with respect to convex costs and product differentiation.

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