Market Segmentation and Product Steering

Stefan Terstiege and Adrien Vigier

American Economic Journal: Microeconomics, 2025, vol. 17, issue 4, 126-46

Abstract: A monopolistic seller possesses an inventory containing distinct products, each consumer wishes to buy a single product, and the seller can steer consumers' choices. We fully characterize the producer-consumer surplus pairs induced by market segmentation when the number of products is large. The same characterization holds if the seller cannot price discriminate. We also investigate the relationship between consumer surplus, social welfare, and consumer privacy. Along the Pareto frontier, points with greater consumer surplus can be reached by market segmentations that afford more privacy.

JEL-codes: D42 D83 L81 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2025
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.aeaweb.org/doi/10.1257/mic.20240078 (application/pdf)
https://www.aeaweb.org/articles/materials/24031 (application/pdf)
https://www.aeaweb.org/articles/materials/24032 (application/zip)
Access to full text is restricted to AEA members and institutional subscribers.

Related works:
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:aea:aejmic:v:17:y:2025:i:4:p:126-46

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
https://www.aeaweb.org/journals/subscriptions

DOI: 10.1257/mic.20240078

Access Statistics for this article

American Economic Journal: Microeconomics is currently edited by Johannes Hörner

More articles in American Economic Journal: Microeconomics from American Economic Association Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Michael P. Albert ().