Prominent Retailer and Intrabrand Competition
研究了在线零售搜索流量集中于显赫零售商对品牌内定价、利润和消费者福利的影响，发现流量集中可能加剧竞争、降低均价并提升福利，但显赫零售商的流量优势可能带来“祝福”或“诅咒”效应，且超过临界值后福利下降，需政策关注。
Online retail search traffic is often concentrated at a “prominent” retailer for a product. The authors unpack the ramifications of this pattern on pricing, profit, and consumer welfare in an intrabrand setting. Prominence denotes a larger number of heterogenous-search-cost consumers starting their search at the prominent retailer than at any other retailer. These analyses show that search traffic concentration can intensify intrabrand competition, lower average prices of all retailers, and improve consumer welfare. Interestingly, the prominent retailer's incremental traffic advantage can increase or reduce its own profit; the authors denote these as the “blessing” and “curse” of prominence, respectively. The authors extend their analysis to a setting where consumers consider searching only among those retailers they are individually aware of; the prominent retailer is included in all these individual awareness sets. The effects on market average prices and welfare carry over, but only below a critical threshold level of the prominent retailer's first-search traffic advantage. Above this threshold, market average prices rise and welfare decreases, making this the region where search concentration warrants scrutiny from policy makers. The authors close with policy remedies and managerial implications of search concentration.