Advertising, consumer awareness, and choice: evidence from the U.S. banking industry
利用美国银行账户的消费者购物和选择数据，研究广告如何影响认知、考虑和选择阶段，发现广告主要提升消费者对更多选项的认知，促进搜索和找到更优选择，从而增加小银行市场份额并增强竞争。
How does advertising influence consumer decisions and market outcomes? We utilize detailed data on consumer shopping behavior and choices over bank accounts to investigate the effects of advertising on the different stages of the shopping process: awareness, consideration, and choice. We formulate a structural model with costly search and endogenous consideration sets, and show that advertising in the U.S. banking industry is primarily a shifter of awareness as opposed to consideration or choice. Advertising makes consumers aware of more options, search more, and find better alternatives. This increases the market share of smaller banks and makes the industry more competitive.