Skimming through search

I examine a two-period duopolistic market for a durable good where firms compete in prices. Consumers are heterogeneous and can be described according to the following characteristics (i) high valuation and high search intensity; (ii) high valuation and low search intensity; (iii) low valuation and high search intensity; and (iv) low valuation and low search intensity. The market exhibits a new version of the so-called Coasian dynamics. The firms engage in intertemporal price discrimination and only consumers with high valuation and low search intensity purchase the product early. This result is based on a property which dictates that the consumers with high valuation and low search intensity are the most impatient. I call this the skimming through search property. When the difference between the high and the low valuation is small, there is positive probability that the prices in the first period are lower than the prices in the second period, so each firm may set a decreasing sequence of prices in a stochastic sense. Furthermore, when the percentage of consumers with high valuation increases, all consumers pay lower prices. This inter-consumer externality resembles the positive externality caused by an increase in market transparency.

Informational Robustness in Intertemporal Pricing

We introduce a robust approach to study dynamic monopoly pricing of a durable good in the face of buyer learning. A buyer receives information about her willingness-to-pay for the seller’s product over time, and decides when to make a one-time purchase. The seller does not know how the buyer learns but commits to a pricing strategy to maximize profits against the worst-case information arrival process. We show that a constant price path delivers the robustly optimal profit, with profit and price both lower than under known values. Thus, under the robust objective, intertemporal incentives do not arise at the optimum, despite the possibility for information arrival to influence the timing of purchases. We delineate whether constant prices remain optimal (or not) when the seller seeks robustness against a subset of information arrival processes. As part of the analysis, we develop new techniques to study dynamic Bayesian persuasion.

Dynamic Durable Goods Monopoly and Market Power

We analyze a vertically differentiated market for an imperfectly durable good served by a monopolist in an infinite-horizon, discrete-time game. Our goal is to identify the Markov perfect stationary equilibria where the seller can maintain his monopoly power. We establish that the set of parameters supporting a monopoly outcome is larger when the seller offers different quality versions of the same product. Hence, our results suggest that, when the innate durability of a product is high, the seller should offer different quality versions of the product.

Decisions on pricing, capacity investment, and introduction timing of new product generations in a durable-good monopoly

The aim of the present paper is to analyze how firms that sell durable goods should optimally combine continuous-time operational level planning with discrete decision making. In particular, a firm has to continuously adapt its capacity investments and sales strategy, but only at certain times it will introduce a new version of the durable good to the market. The launch of a new generation of the product attracts new customers. However, in order to be able to produce the new version, production facilities need to be adapted leading to a decrease of available production capacities. We find that the price of a given generation of a product decreases over time. A firm should increase its production capacity most upon introduction of a new product. The stock of potential consumers is largest then so that the market is most profitable. The extent to which existing capacity can still be used in the production process for the next generation has a non-monotonic effect on the time when a new version of the product is introduced as well as on the capital stock level at that time.

An analysis of post traumatic leg and foot defects

Background: Management of lower extremity trauma with bone and soft tissue injury is a challenging task with the aim of giving early recovery and durable good quality skin cover according to the skin defect and analyze various reconstructive options at various levels of injury. Our aim of the study is to analyze various reconstructive options for traumatic skin loss involving lower limbs especially knee and below knee, and analyze the incidence of age, sex and etiology of traumatic defects.Methods: Prospective study in our plastic surgery department in the period of 24 months, with all the cases of traumatic defects of leg and foot where included. All age and sex patients were included.Results: Most common cause for traumatic leg and foot defects are road traffic accidents followed by accidental fall and others, most commonly in males amounting 73%, children 10% and females 17%, among the skin and soft tissue defects upper and lower 1/3 leg defects are predominant. Among the soft tissue coverage split thickness skin graft dominating about 60% of cases, flaps 30% of cases, among the flaps 70% are fasciocutaneous flaps predominantly inferiorly based and 30% are muscle and musculocutaneous flaps, among the muscle predominantly soleus muscle flap was used to cover the defect.Conclusions:Road traffic accidents dominating the cause for leg and foot defects , males are more commonly affected and upper one third leg defects are predominant for soft tissue coverage split thickness skin graft are commonest procedures followed that cutaneous and muscle flaps.

Modeling the Consumers Opinion Influence in Online Social Media in the Case of Eco-friendly Products

Social influence has a positive impact on the purchase intention for eco-friendly products along with other subjective and objective aspects related to environmental attitude, product attitude, and subjective and objective knowledge. Also, exposure to media has been proven to have a significant positive affect on environmental attitude, with effect on the purchase intention. Several recent studies have shown the importance of consumers’ influence in online social networks, underlying the role played by the online environments over consumers’ attitude. As a result, the current research tries to analyze the influence exerted on consumers’ decision to purchase eco-friendly products by their activity in online social environments. Using a questionnaire, filled-in by 409 respondents, a series of variables have been extracted with regard to the eco-friendly products. An agent-based model has been created, fed with the values of the variables extracted from the questionnaire, and used for simulations. As a result, it has been observed that an increase in online media exposure can have a high positive impact on the eco-friendly product adoption. Depending on the type of product—soft or durable good—different times for the eco-friendly product adoption have been determined relatively to the considered variables. Last, the possible limitations of using an agent-based modeling approach are discussed, along with possible extensions and improvements.