Sparking curiosity or tipping the scales? Targeted advertising with consumer learning

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This paper argues, in the context of targeted advertising, that receivers’ ability to independently acquire information has a non-trivial impact on the sender’s optimal disclosure strategy. In our model, a monopolist has an opportunity to launch an advertising campaign and chooses a targeting strategy – which consumers to send its advertisement to. The consumers are uncertain about and heterogeneous in their valuations of the product, and can engage in costly learning about their true valuations. We discover that the firm generally prefers to target consumers who are either indifferent between ignoring and investigating the product, or between investigating and buying it unconditionally. If the firm is uncertain about the consumer appeal of its product, it targets these two distinct groups of consumers simultaneously but may ignore all consumers in between.
Translated title of the contributionSparking curiosity or tipping the scales? Targeted advertising with consumer learning
Original languageEnglish
Article number102885
JournalJournal of Economic Behavior & Organization
Volume213
Pages (from-to)172-192
ISSN0167-2681
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - Sep 2023

ID: 362340662