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Exploding offers and buy-now discounts

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  • Armstrong, Mark
  • Zhou, Jidong

Abstract

A common sales tactic is for a seller to encourage a potential customer to make her purchase decision quickly. We consider a market with sequential consumer search in which firms often encourage first-time visitors to buy immediately, either by making an "exploding offer" (which permits no return once the consumer leaves) or by offering a "buy-now discount" (which makes the price paid for immediate purchase lower than the regular price). Prices often increase when these policies are used. If firms cannot commit to their sales policy, the outcome depends on whether consumer incur an intrinsic cost of returning to a firm: if there is no such return cost, it is often an equilibrium for firms to offer a uniform price to both first-time and returning visitors; if the return cost is positive, however, firms are forced to make exploding offers.

Suggested Citation

  • Armstrong, Mark & Zhou, Jidong, 2010. "Exploding offers and buy-now discounts," MPRA Paper 24849, University Library of Munich, Germany.
  • Handle: RePEc:pra:mprapa:24849
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    References listed on IDEAS

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    Cited by:

    1. Mark Armstrong & Jidong Zhou, 2016. "Search Deterrence," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 83(1), pages 26-57.
    2. Jason Allen & Robert Clark & Jean-François Houde, 2019. "Search Frictions and Market Power in Negotiated-Price Markets," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 127(4), pages 1550-1598.
    3. Philippe Choné & Romain De Nijs & Lionel Wilner, 2012. "Intertemporal Pricing with Unobserved Consumer Arrival Times," Working Papers 2012-23, Center for Research in Economics and Statistics.
    4. Armstrong, Mark & Zhou, Jidong, 2010. "Exploding offers and buy-now discounts," MPRA Paper 22531, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    5. Fernando Branco & Monic Sun & J. Miguel Villas-Boas, 2012. "Optimal Search for Product Information," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 58(11), pages 2037-2056, November.
    6. Sugden, Robert & Wang, Mengjie & Zizzo, Daniel John, 2019. "Take it or leave it: Experimental evidence on the effect of time-limited offers on consumer behaviour," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 168(C), pages 1-23.
    7. Maarten Janssen & Alexei Parakhonyak, 2014. "Consumer search markets with costly revisits," Economic Theory, Springer;Society for the Advancement of Economic Theory (SAET), vol. 55(2), pages 481-514, February.
    8. Zhou, Jidong, 2011. "Multiproduct search," MPRA Paper 37139, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    9. Hui Xiong & Ying-Ju Chen, 2014. "Product Line Design with Seller-Induced Learning," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 60(3), pages 784-795, March.

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    More about this item

    Keywords

    Consumer search; oligopoly; price discrimination; high-pressure selling; exploding offers; costly recall;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • D18 - Microeconomics - - Household Behavior - - - Consumer Protection
    • D83 - Microeconomics - - Information, Knowledge, and Uncertainty - - - Search; Learning; Information and Knowledge; Communication; Belief; Unawareness
    • D43 - Microeconomics - - Market Structure, Pricing, and Design - - - Oligopoly and Other Forms of Market Imperfection

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