scholarly journals Trademarks and Consumer Search Costs on the Internet

2004 ◽  
Author(s):  
Stacey L. Dogan ◽  
Mark A. Lemley
Keyword(s):  
Search Costs ◽  
Consumer Search ◽  
The Internet

scholarly journals Trademarks and Consumer Search Costs on the Internet

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mark Lemley
Keyword(s):  
Relevant Information ◽  
Search Costs ◽  
Consumer Search ◽  
Legal Responsibility ◽  
One Dimension ◽  
The Internet ◽  
Trademark Law ◽  
Information Tools

In theory, trademarks serve as information tools, by conveying productinformation through convenient, identifiable symbols. In practice, however,trademarks have increasingly been used to obstruct the flow of informationabout competing products and services. In the online context, inparticular, some courts have recently allowed trademark holders to blockuses of their marks that would never have raised an eyebrow in abrick-and-mortar setting - uses that increase, rather than diminish, theflow of truthful, relevant information to consumers. These courts havestretched trademark doctrine on more than one dimension, both by expandingthe concept of actionable "confusion" and by broadening the classes ofpeople who can face legal responsibility for that confusion. And they havebased their decisions not on the normative goals of trademark law, but onunexplored instincts and tenuous presumptions about consumer expectationsand practices on the Internet. We argue that this expansionist trend inInternet trademark cases threatens to undermine a central goal of theLanham Act - to promote fair and robust competition through reducingconsumer search costs.

scholarly journals Search, Design, and Market Structure

2012 ◽  
Vol 102 (2) ◽  
pp. 1140-1160 ◽  
Author(s):  
Heski Bar-Isaac ◽  
Guillermo Caruana ◽  
Vicente Cuñat
Keyword(s):  
Market Structure ◽  
Industry Structure ◽  
Search Costs ◽  
Consumer Search ◽  
The Internet ◽  
Long Tail ◽  
Strategic Design ◽  
Vertical Heterogeneity ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
Search Design

The Internet has made consumer search easier, with consequences for prices, industry structure, and the kinds of products offered. We provide an industry model with strategic design choices that explores these issues. A polarized market structure results: some firms choose designs aimed at broad-based audiences, while others target narrow niches. We analyze the effect of reduced search costs, finding results consistent with the reported prevalence of niche goods and long-tail and superstar phenomena. In particular, the model suggests that long-tail effects arise when there is a wide range of potential designs, relative to vertical heterogeneity among firms. JEL: D11, D21, D83, L11, L86, M31

scholarly journals Consumer Search Costs and Preferences on the Internet

2018 ◽  
Vol 86 (3) ◽  
pp. 1258-1300 ◽  
Author(s):  
Grégory Jolivet ◽  
Hélène Turon
Keyword(s):  
Search Costs ◽  
Consumer Search ◽  
The Internet

scholarly journals Online rental housing market representation and the digital reproduction of urban inequality

2019 ◽  
Vol 52 (2) ◽  
pp. 449-468 ◽  
Author(s):  
Geoff Boeing
Keyword(s):  
Housing Market ◽  
Smart Cities ◽  
Rental Housing ◽  
Search Costs ◽  
Poverty Rate ◽  
The Internet ◽  
Urban Inequality ◽  
The Usa ◽  
Housing Search ◽  
Rental Housing Market

As the rental housing market moves online, the internet offers divergent possible futures: either the promise of more-equal access to information for previously marginalized homeseekers, or a reproduction of longstanding information inequalities. Biases in online listings’ representativeness could impact different communities’ access to housing search information, reinforcing traditional information segregation patterns through a digital divide. They could also circumscribe housing practitioners’ and researchers’ ability to draw broad market insights from listings to understand rental supply and affordability. This study examines millions of Craigslist rental listings across the USA and finds that they spatially concentrate and overrepresent whiter, wealthier, and better-educated communities. Other significant demographic differences exist in age, language, college enrollment, rent, poverty rate, and household size. Most cities’ online housing markets are digitally segregated by race and class, and we discuss various implications for residential mobility, community legibility, gentrification, housing voucher utilization, and automated monitoring and analytics in the smart cities paradigm. While Craigslist contains valuable crowdsourced data to better understand affordability and available rental supply in real time, it does not evenly represent all market segments. The internet promises information democratization, and online listings can reduce housing search costs and increase choice sets. However, technology access/preferences and information channel segregation can concentrate such information-broadcasting benefits in already-advantaged communities, reproducing traditional inequalities and reinforcing residential sorting and segregation dynamics. Technology platforms like Craigslist construct new institutions with the power to shape spatial economies, human interactions, and planners’ ability to monitor and respond to urban challenges.

scholarly journals Beliefs and Consumer Search in a Vertical Industry

2019 ◽  
Vol 18 (5) ◽  
pp. 2359-2393 ◽  
Author(s):  
Maarten Janssen ◽  
Sandro Shelegia
Keyword(s):  
Low Cost ◽  
Search Costs ◽  
Retail Price ◽  
Consumer Search ◽  
Common Assumption ◽  
Vertical Relations ◽  
Retail Prices ◽  
The Common ◽  
Search Market ◽  
Pass Through

Abstract This paper studies vertical relations in a search market. As the wholesale arrangement between a manufacturer and its retailers is typically unobserved by consumers, their beliefs about who is to be blamed for a price deviation play a crucial role in determining wholesale and retail prices. The common assumption in the consumer search literature is that consumers exclusively blame an individual retailer for a price deviation. We show that in the vertical relations context, predictions based on this assumption are not robust in the sense that if consumers hold the upstream manufacturer at least partially responsible for the deviation, equilibrium predictions are qualitatively different. For robust beliefs, the vertical model can explain a variety of observations, such as retail price rigidity (or, alternatively, low cost pass-through), nonmonotonicity of retail prices in search costs, and (seemingly) collusive retail behavior. The model can be used to study a monopoly online platform that sells access to final consumers.

Internet and prevalence of relative thinking

2019 ◽  
Vol 36 (5) ◽  
pp. 600-609
Author(s):  
Sweta Chaturvedi Thota ◽  
Ritwik Kinra
Keyword(s):  
Design Methodology ◽  
Search Costs ◽  
Price Sensitivity ◽  
Future Research ◽  
The Internet ◽  
Content Type ◽  
Diagnostic Measures ◽  
Managerial Implications ◽  
Scenario Study ◽  
Central Claim

Purpose Research demonstrates that individuals display relative thinking – the tendency to consider relative savings rather than just absolute savings in their decisions to search for a deal or purchase an item. This paper aims to review empirical and analytical literature on relative thinking, perceived search costs and price savings to propose and test a conceptual model of relative thinking. Design/methodology/approach Through two studies, the paper tests whether individuals display relative thinking when shopping across stores vs online and how they perceive search and time spent in pursuing savings. Both studies are adaptations of the classic jacket-and-calculator scenario study (Tversky and Kahneman, 1981). Findings Results show attenuation of the robust relative thinking phenomenon over the internet compared to shopping across stores. Individuals exhibit increased price sensitivity for both low and high relative savings conditions on the internet but demonstrate price sensitivity only in the high relative savings condition in the store shopping contexts. Diagnostic measures pertaining to the attractiveness of savings and the perceptions of search costs corroborate the support for relative thinking across stores but not over the internet. Originality/value These results lend weight to the central claim in this paper that the internet marks a new boundary condition for the relative thinking phenomenon in marketing literature. Theoretical and managerial implications of the findings, the limitations of the studies and future research opportunities are discussed.

Objectives of Search and Combination of Information Channels in Electronic Consumer Markets

2011 ◽  
pp. 51-68
Author(s):  
Anssi Oorni
Keyword(s):  
World Wide ◽  
Information Sources ◽  
Product Information ◽  
Search Costs ◽  
Present Knowledge ◽  
Consumer Search ◽  
Economic Theories ◽  
Value Maximization ◽  
Consumer Markets ◽  
The World

Internet-based commerce is expected to radically affect many consumer markets. Present knowledge of the forthcoming transformations is based largely on the principle of value maximization; in standard economic theories of search, consumers are assumed to be both able and motivated to rationally weigh the costs and benefits they expect to ensue from search. High search costs are offered to explain why consumers evidently do not fully inform themselves about the available options. Electronic media are expected to lower search costs and, thus, radically enhance consumer search. However, little empirical evidence exists in support of these assumptions. The combination of information sources consumers prefer to use is largely unexplored in relation to electronic information sources. Likewise, our knowledge of the objectives related to the procurement decision that leads consumers to adopt electronic sources for product information is still lacking. In this chapter, we examine the determinants of using Internet-based information sources, particularly the World Wide Web.

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