IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/oup/restud/v51y1984i1p53-61..html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Product Differentiation with Imperfect Information

Author

Listed:
  • Asher Wolinsky

Abstract

The paper employs a model of monopolistic competition and product differentiation with consumers who are not well informed about the specification of the offered brands. Welfare analysis of the degree of product differentiation in such a market concludes that the socially desirable product variety is limited due to consumers' imperfect information. Consequently, when the number of consumers is sufficiently large or economies to scale in production are sufficiently weak, the market would offer excessive variety.

Suggested Citation

  • Asher Wolinsky, 1984. "Product Differentiation with Imperfect Information," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 51(1), pages 53-61.
    • Handle: RePEc:oup:restud:v:51:y:1984:i:1:p:53-61.
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.2307/2297704
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Arbatskaya, Maria & Konishi, Hideo, 2012. "Referrals in search markets," International Journal of Industrial Organization, Elsevier, vol. 30(1), pages 89-101.
    2. Shin‐kun Peng, 2004. "Spatial Monopoly with Product Differentiation," Southern Economic Journal, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 70(3), pages 646-660, January.
    3. Jose Luis Moraga-Gonzalez & Zsolt Sandor & Matthijs R. Wildenbeest, 2008. "Nonparametric Estimation of the Costs of Non-Sequential Search," Tinbergen Institute Discussion Papers 07-102/1, Tinbergen Institute.
    4. Simon P. Anderson & Regis Renault, 1999. "Pricing, Product Diversity, and Search Costs: A Bertrand-Chamberlin-Diamond Model," RAND Journal of Economics, The RAND Corporation, vol. 30(4), pages 719-735, Winter.
    5. Schultz, Christian, 2009. "Transparency and product variety," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 102(3), pages 165-168, March.
    6. Nils‐Henrik M. von der Fehr & Kristin Stevik, 1998. "Persuasive Advertising and Product Differentiation," Southern Economic Journal, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 65(1), pages 113-126, July.
    7. Braid, Ralph M., 1998. "Spatial price competition when stores are not certain to have what consumers want," Regional Science and Urban Economics, Elsevier, vol. 28(2), pages 143-161, March.
    8. Luca Macedoni, 2022. "Asymmetric information, quality, and regulations," Review of International Economics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 30(4), pages 1180-1198, September.
    9. Tse, Chung Yi, 2006. "New product introduction with costly search," Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control, Elsevier, vol. 30(12), pages 2775-2792, December.
    10. Gérard P. Cachon & Christian Terwiesch & Yi Xu, 2005. "Retail Assortment Planning in the Presence of Consumer Search," Manufacturing & Service Operations Management, INFORMS, vol. 7(4), pages 330-346, August.
    11. Simon P. Anderson & Régis Renault & Claude Jessua, 1996. "Produits différenciés et information imparfaite des consommateurs," Revue Économique, Programme National Persée, vol. 47(3), pages 425-435.
    12. G. E. Fruchter, 2009. "Signaling Quality: Dynamic Price-Advertising Model," Journal of Optimization Theory and Applications, Springer, vol. 143(3), pages 479-496, December.
    13. Schultz, Christian, 2004. "Market transparency and product differentiation," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 83(2), pages 173-178, May.
    14. Chrysanthos Dellarocas & Zsolt Katona & William Rand, 2013. "Media, Aggregators, and the Link Economy: Strategic Hyperlink Formation in Content Networks," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 59(10), pages 2360-2379, October.
    15. Bing Jing, 2007. "Product differentiation under imperfect information: When does offering a lower quality pay?," Quantitative Marketing and Economics (QME), Springer, vol. 5(1), pages 35-61, March.
    16. Gravelle, Hugh & Masiero, Giuliano, 2000. "Quality incentives in a regulated market with imperfect information and switching costs: capitation in general practice," Journal of Health Economics, Elsevier, vol. 19(6), pages 1067-1088, November.
    17. Fernando Bernstein & Victor Martínez-de-Albéniz, 2017. "Dynamic Product Rotation in the Presence of Strategic Customers," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 63(7), pages 2092-2107, July.
    18. Thomas S. Conkling, 2020. "Compliance and competition with heterogeneous service providers: the federal Lifeline program," Journal of Regulatory Economics, Springer, vol. 57(1), pages 74-104, February.
    19. Tse, C.Y.Chung Yi, 2004. "Search frictions, market power, and long-run growth," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 116(2), pages 323-346, June.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:oup:restud:v:51:y:1984:i:1:p:53-61.. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Oxford University Press (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://academic.oup.com/restud .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.