Uncharted Waters: Selling a New Product Robustly

Kun Zhang

Papers from arXiv.org

Abstract: When introducing a novel product, a seller sets a price and decides how much information to provide to a buyer, who may incur a search cost to discover an outside option. The buyer knows the outside option distribution; the seller knows only its mean and bounds. Seeking "robustness," the seller evaluates strategies based on guaranteed profits, balancing search deterrence against surplus extraction. Providing information can deter search and boost demand but requires offering the buyer a higher payoff via a lower price. Results help explain the variations in information provision among new products and suggest that lower search costs can raise prices and lead to noisier information, potentially harming consumers.

Date: 2025-08
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-com, nep-des and nep-mic
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