DP8756 The advertising mix for a search good

Author(s):	Simon P Anderson, Régis Renault
Publication Date:	January 2012
Keyword(s):	advertising, content analysis, information, persuasion game, search
JEL(s):	D42, L15, M37
Programme Areas:	Industrial Organization
Link to this Page:	cepr.org/active/publications/discussion_papers/dp.php?dpno=8756

We extend the persuasion game to bring it squarely into the economics of advertising. We model advertising as exciting consumer interest into learning more about the product, and determine a firm's equilibrium choice of advertising content over quality information, price information, and horizontal match information. Equilibrium is unique whenever advertising is necessary. The outcome is a separating equilibrium with quality unravelling. Lower quality firms need to provide more information. For a given quality level, as a function of consumer visit costs, first quality information is disclosed, then price information and then horizontal product information are added to the advertising mix. Some suggestive evidence is provided from airline ads in newspapers.