Ordered Consumer Search

Mark Armstrong

MPRA Paper from University Library of Munich, Germany

Abstract: The paper discusses situations in which consumers search through their options in a deliberate order, in contrast to more familiar models with random search. Topics include: network effects (consumers may be better off following the same search order as other consumers); the use of price and non-price advertising to direct search; the impact of consumers starting a new search with their previous supplier; the incentive sellers have to merge or co-locate with other sellers; and the incentive a seller can have to raise its own search cost. I also show how ordered search can be reformulated as a simpler discrete choice problem without search frictions.

Keywords: Consumer search; sequential search; ordered search; directed search; discrete choice; oligopoly; advertising; obfuscation. (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D21 D43 D83 L11 L15 M37 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2016-06-24
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-com, nep-dcm, nep-mic and nep-mkt
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (5)

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https://mpra.ub.uni-muenchen.de/72194/3/MPRA_paper_72194.pdf original version (application/pdf)

Related works:
Journal Article: Ordered Consumer Search (2017)
Working Paper: Ordered Consumer Search (2016)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:pra:mprapa:72194

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