Quality Is in the Eye of the Beholder: Taste Projection in Markets with Observational Learning
研究消费者在观察他人购买行为时，如何因高估自己与他人品味的相似性而产生质量感知偏差，进而影响市场需求和垄断定价策略。
We study how misperceptions of others’ tastes influence beliefs, demand, and prices in markets with observational learning. Consumers infer a good’s quality from the quantity demanded and price paid by others. When consumers exaggerate the similarity between their and others’ tastes, such “taste projection” generates discrepant quality perceptions, which are decreasing in a projector’s taste and increasing in the observed price. These biased inferences produce an excessively elastic market demand. We also analyze dynamic monopoly pricing with short-lived taste-projecting consumers. Optimal pricing follows a declining path: a high initial price inflates future buyers’ perceptions, and lower subsequent prices induce overadoption.