IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/duk/dukeec/03-02.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Price Experimentation with Strategic Buyers

Author

Listed:
  • Loginova, Oksana
  • Taylor, Curtis

Abstract

There are many situations in which buyers have a significant stake in what a firm learns about their demands. Specifically, any time that price discrimination is possible on an individual basis and repeat purchases are likely, buyers possess incentives for strategic manipulation of demand information. A simple two-period model in which a monopolist endeavors to learn about the demand parameter of a repeat buyer is presented here. It is shown that high first-period prices may lead to strategic rejections by high-valuation buyers who wish to conceal information (i.e., to pool), while low first-period prices may lead to strategic rejections by low-valuation buyers who wish to reveal information (i.e., to signal). The seller never experiments against patient buyers in any equilibrium. Indeed, the seller often charges first-period prices that reveal no information at all, and she may even set an equilibrium first-period price strictly below the buyer's lowest possible valuation.

Suggested Citation

  • Loginova, Oksana & Taylor, Curtis, 2003. "Price Experimentation with Strategic Buyers," Working Papers 03-02, Duke University, Department of Economics.
    • Handle: RePEc:duk:dukeec:03-02
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.econ.duke.edu/Papers/Abstracts03/abstract.03.02.html
    File Function: main text
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Godfrey Keller & Sven Rady, 1999. "Optimal Experimentation in a Changing Environment," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 66(3), pages 475-507.
    2. Philippe Aghion & Patrick Bolton & Christopher Harris & Bruno Jullien, 1991. "Optimal Learning by Experimentation," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 58(4), pages 621-654.
    3. Ilya Segal, 2003. "Optimal Pricing Mechanisms with Unknown Demand," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 93(3), pages 509-529, June.
    4. Rothschild, Michael, 1974. "A two-armed bandit theory of market pricing," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 9(2), pages 185-202, October.
    5. Drew Fudenberg & Jean Tirole, 2000. "Customer Poaching and Brand Switching," RAND Journal of Economics, The RAND Corporation, vol. 31(4), pages 634-657, Winter.
    6. Marco Battaglini, 2005. "Long-Term Contracting with Markovian Consumers," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 95(3), pages 637-658, June.
    7. L. Wade, 1988. "Review," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 58(1), pages 99-100, July.
    8. Alessandro Acquisti & Hal R. Varian, 2005. "Conditioning Prices on Purchase History," Marketing Science, INFORMS, vol. 24(3), pages 367-381, May.
    9. Rustichini, Aldo & Wolinsky, Asher, 1995. "Learning about variable demand in the long run," Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control, Elsevier, vol. 19(5-7), pages 1283-1292.
    10. Mirman, Leonard J & Samuelson, Larry & Urbano, Amparo, 1993. "Monopoly Experimentation," International Economic Review, Department of Economics, University of Pennsylvania and Osaka University Institute of Social and Economic Research Association, vol. 34(3), pages 549-563, August.
    11. Armstrong, Mark, 1996. "Multiproduct Nonlinear Pricing," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 64(1), pages 51-75, January.
    12. Taylor, Curtis R, 2003. "Supplier Surfing: Competition and Consumer Behavior in Subscription Markets," RAND Journal of Economics, The RAND Corporation, vol. 34(2), pages 223-246, Summer.
    13. Greg Shaffer & Z. John Zhang, 2000. "Pay to Switch or Pay to Stay: Preference‐Based Price Discrimination in Markets with Switching Costs," Journal of Economics & Management Strategy, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 9(3), pages 397-424, June.
    14. Oliver D. Hart & Jean Tirole, 1988. "Contract Renegotiation and Coasian Dynamics," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 55(4), pages 509-540.
    15. John Kennan, 2001. "Repeated Bargaining with Persistent Private Information," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 68(4), pages 719-755.
    16. Lazear, Edward P, 1986. "Retail Pricing and Clearance Sales," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 76(1), pages 14-32, March.
    17. Laffont, Jean-Jacques & Tirole, Jean, 1988. "The Dynamics of Incentive Contracts," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 56(5), pages 1153-1175, September.
    18. J. Miguel Villas-Boas, 1999. "Dynamic Competition with Customer Recognition," RAND Journal of Economics, The RAND Corporation, vol. 30(4), pages 604-631, Winter.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

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


    Cited by:

    1. Henry W. Chappell & Paulo Guimarães & Orgül Demet Öztürk, 2011. "Confessions of an internet monopolist: demand estimation for a versioned information good," Managerial and Decision Economics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 32(1), pages 1-15, January.
    2. Raphael Boleslavsky & Maher Said, 2013. "Progressive Screening: Long-Term Contracting with a Privately Known Stochastic Process," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 80(1), pages 1-34.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Oksana Loginova & Curtis Taylor, 2008. "Price experimentation with strategic buyers," Review of Economic Design, Springer;Society for Economic Design, vol. 12(3), pages 165-187, September.
    2. Vincent Conitzer & Curtis R. Taylor & Liad Wagman, 2012. "Hide and Seek: Costly Consumer Privacy in a Market with Repeat Purchases," Marketing Science, INFORMS, vol. 31(2), pages 277-292, March.
    3. Chen, Yuxin & Zhang, Z. John, 2009. "Dynamic targeted pricing with strategic consumers," International Journal of Industrial Organization, Elsevier, vol. 27(1), pages 43-50, January.
    4. Curtis Taylor & Liad Wagman, 2008. "Who Benefits From Online Privacy?," Working Papers 08-26, NET Institute.
    5. Jia, Kunhao & Liao, Xiuwu & Feng, Juan, 2018. "Selling or leasing? Dynamic pricing of software with upgrades," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 266(3), pages 1044-1061.
    6. Mark Armstrong, 2005. "Recent Developments in the Economics of Price Discrimination," Industrial Organization 0511004, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    7. Bita Hajihashemi & Amin Sayedi & Jeffrey D. Shulman, 2022. "The Perils of Personalized Pricing with Network Effects," Marketing Science, INFORMS, vol. 41(3), pages 477-500, May.
    8. Stole, Lars A., 2007. "Price Discrimination and Competition," Handbook of Industrial Organization, in: Mark Armstrong & Robert Porter (ed.), Handbook of Industrial Organization, edition 1, volume 3, chapter 34, pages 2221-2299, Elsevier.
    9. Battaglini, Marco, 2007. "Optimality and renegotiation in dynamic contracting," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 60(2), pages 213-246, August.
    10. Jeong, Yuncheol & Maruyama, Masayoshi, 2018. "Positioning and pricing strategies in a market with switching costs and staying costs," Information Economics and Policy, Elsevier, vol. 44(C), pages 47-57.
    11. Bing Jing, 2017. "Behavior-Based Pricing, Production Efficiency, and Quality Differentiation," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 63(7), pages 2365-2376, July.
    12. Bernard Caillaud & Romain De Nijs, 2014. "Strategic Loyalty Reward in Dynamic Price Discrimination," Marketing Science, INFORMS, vol. 33(5), pages 725-742, September.
    13. Esteves, Rosa-Branca, 2010. "Pricing with customer recognition," International Journal of Industrial Organization, Elsevier, vol. 28(6), pages 669-681, November.
    14. Bing Jing, 2016. "Customer Recognition in Experience vs. Inspection Good Markets," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 62(1), pages 216-224, January.
    15. T. Tony Ke & K. Sudhir, 2023. "Privacy Rights and Data Security: GDPR and Personal Data Markets," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 69(8), pages 4389-4412, August.
    16. Flavio Pino, 2022. "The microeconomics of data – a survey," Economia e Politica Industriale: Journal of Industrial and Business Economics, Springer;Associazione Amici di Economia e Politica Industriale, vol. 49(3), pages 635-665, September.
    17. Sun, Ching-jen, 2007. "Dynamic Price Discrimination and Quality Provision Based on Purchase History," MPRA Paper 9855, University Library of Munich, Germany, revised Aug 2008.
    18. Mason, Robin & Välimäki, Juuso, 2011. "Learning about the arrival of sales," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 146(4), pages 1699-1711, July.
    19. Kislaya Prasad, 2008. "Price asymptotics," Review of Economic Design, Springer;Society for Economic Design, vol. 12(1), pages 21-32, April.
    20. Bernard Caillaud & Romain de Nijs, 2011. "Strategic loyalty reward in dynamic price Discrimination," Working Papers halshs-00622291, HAL.

    More about this item

    JEL classification:

    • C73 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Game Theory and Bargaining Theory - - - Stochastic and Dynamic Games; Evolutionary Games
    • D81 - Microeconomics - - Information, Knowledge, and Uncertainty - - - Criteria for Decision-Making under Risk and Uncertainty
    • D82 - Microeconomics - - Information, Knowledge, and Uncertainty - - - Asymmetric and Private Information; Mechanism Design

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    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:duk:dukeec:03-02. 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.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with 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: Department of Economics Webmaster (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://econ.duke.edu/ .

    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.