The Price of Discovering Your Needs Online

Elias Carroni, L. Ferrari and Simone Righi

Working Papers from Dipartimento Scienze Economiche, Universita' di Bologna

Abstract: Thanks to new digital technologies, web users are continuously targeted by offers that potentially fit their interests even if they are not actively looking for a product. Does this matching always promote transactions with high social value? We consider a model in which web users with state-contingent preferences are targeted by relevant banners. We characterize the optimal strategy of a seller who, in addition to the price of the offered good, designs a banner. We show that, in equilibrium, there is a positive relationship between the price of the offered good and the accuracy of the banner sent to users. Then, we consider the strategic decision of a Platform that attracts sellers because of its targeting abilities and we underline that a reduction in seller's costs may translate into less informative banners and lower prices, fueling purchases of goods that rational individuals may regret due to the persuasive nature of banners.

JEL-codes: D80 D82 D83 L10 M37 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2018-01
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-ict, nep-mic, nep-mkt and nep-pay
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://amsacta.unibo.it/5761/1/WP1116.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
Journal Article: The price of discovering your needs online (2019)
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:bol:bodewp:wp1116

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Working Papers from Dipartimento Scienze Economiche, Universita' di Bologna Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Dipartimento Scienze Economiche, Universita' di Bologna ().