Timing of information acquisition in a competitive environment
研究双寡头市场中卖家在产品设计前或后获取消费者偏好信息的不同时机对利润的影响，发现竞争下信息获取可能有害且时机选择至关重要。
This article investigates the impact of timing on sellers' information acquisition strategies in a duopoly setting. Market uncertainty is captured by a representative consumer who has a private taste for the product's horizontal attribute, and both sellers can acquire this information either before (ex-ante acquisition) or after (ex-post acquisition) observing their own product qualities. We identify several conflicting effects of information acquisition that vary significantly in its timing and market characteristics. In the monopoly scenario, information acquisition is unambiguously beneficial and ex-ante acquisition is the dominant option, because it helps a seller not only design the proper product but also craft better pricing strategy. By contrast, when there is competition, information acquisition eliminates the buffer role of market uncertainty and leads to the fiercest production or pricing competition, which makes the subsequent effects of acquisition detrimental, and a seller's payoff is nonmonotonic in terms of its acquisition cost. Moreover, compared with the ex-ante information acquisition, ex-post information acquisition normally generates higher sellers' equilibrium payoffs by postponing the timing of acquisition and maintaining product differentiation. Nonetheless, ex-post information acquisition also provides the seller with greater acquisition incentive and occasionally makes him worse off than that in the ex-ante scenario. Thus, in a competitive environment, having the option of information acquisition and flexibility in its timing can be both detrimental and irresistible. © 2016 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Naval Research Logistics 63: 3–22, 2016