How Does the Use of Trademarks by Third-Party Sellers Affect Online Search?
研究了谷歌允许第三方卖家在广告中使用商标后，对酒店业在线搜索的影响，发现这减少了消费者点击商标持有者付费广告的概率，但增加了点击自然搜索结果的概率。
Firms that sell via a direct channel and via indirect channels have to decide whether to allow third-party sellers to use trademarked brand names of products in their advertising. This question has been particularly controversial for advertising on search engines. In June 2009, Google started allowing any third-party reseller of a product to use a trademark such as “DoubleTree” in the text of its ad, even if the reseller did not have the trademark holder's permission. We study the effects of this change empirically within the hotel industry. We find some evidence that allowing third-party sellers to use a trademark in their online search advertising weakly reduced the likelihood of a consumer clicking on a trademark holder's paid search ads. However, the decrease in paid clicks was outweighed by a large increase in consumers clicking on the unpaid links to the hotelier's website within the main search results. Our evidence shows that when a third-party seller focuses on a trademarked brand in its ads, the ads become less distinct, and customers are more likely to ignore the advertised offers and buy from the direct channel.