Advertising Themes

这项研究在三个方向上拓宽了广告经济模型的基础（如下所述），使经济学和市场营销领域更加紧密地结合在一起。 该项目的第一部分是副标题为“广告属性。“这一部分追溯了假设广告可以提高消费者对产品属性的评价的含义。在这种方法下，当一个公司认可其产品的一个属性（或“特性”）时，这也会提高具有该属性的其他竞争产品的感知质量。这意味着，对于具有类似属性的产品，广告可以产生积极的溢出效应--一种“提高所有船只”的效应。还有一些更传统的业务窃取溢出效应，来自于为具有不同属性的产品做广告。广告强调属性的程度（以及产品中的产品属性矩阵）决定了溢出的净模式。如果广告可以集中在特定的属性，那么最多一个公司将广告任何给定的属性。该项目的第二部分有助于“注意力经济学”。“它解决了广告商面临的问题，打破了其他广告商造成的广告混乱。结果可能是这样一种情况，即公司必须大力宣传，因为其他公司也在这样做：他们“很想被听到。“然而，同样的市场参数也可以与更低的广告量和更广泛的信息传播相一致。在这种情况下，信息中介（如电视广播公司）有动机鼓励大量的信息：更高的价格产生更少的混乱（有利于广告受众甚至广告客户），但中介的利润更少。对信息获取的竞争性定价进行分析的结果之一是，税收可以最大限度地减少过度的信息广度和深度。如果同一行业内的信息服务提供商之间存在市场竞争，则需要对这一规定进行调整。这种竞争可以在争夺注意力的过程中产生价格分散和行业间溢出（跨越均衡价格分布）的均衡。第三部分，“广告：说服力博弈”，通过将价格和水平特征引入营销决策，将经典的质量披露博弈直接框定为广告模型，从而扩展了广告经济模型的有限稳定性。两个版本的框架被认为是，对应于不同的消费者行为，在不同的行业。如果消费者的产品预期是在她访问商店之前形成的（例如头痛药），相应的“体验良好”版本的模型表明，低质量的公司应该提供更大程度的水平信息。对于“搜索商品”，消费者只有在访问之后才能发现关键的维度（例如，对于航空公司，消费者必须访问网站或电话以了解航班何时起飞）。这一分析更为详尽，并包括广告价格的决定。结果表明，高质量的公司不太可能公布价格。 从航空公司的广告和电视上的止痛药广告的数据进行了分析，以测试从理论模型得出的结论。

This research broadens the base of economic models of advertising in three directions (described below), leading to a closer integration between the fields of Economics and Marketing. The first part of the project is sub-titled "Advertising Attributes." This part traces the implications of assuming that advertising may enhance consumer valuation of product attributes. Under this approach, when a firm advertises an attribute (or "characteristic") of its product, this also raises the perceived quality of other rival products that have the attribute. This means that there can be positive spill-overs in advertising - a "Raise-all-boats" effect - for products with similar attributes. There are also the more traditional spill-overs from business stealing that come from advertising for products with dissimilar attributes. The extent to which advertising emphasizes attributes (and the matrix of product attributes in products) determines the net pattern of spill-overs. If advertising can be focused on particular attributes, then at most one firm will advertise any given attribute. The second part of the project contributes to the "Economics of Attention." It addresses the problem that advertisers face of breaking through advertising clutter caused by other advertisers. The upshot can be a situation where firms must advertise heavily because others are doing so: they are "Shouting to be heard." However, the same market parameters can also be consistent with a much lower volume of advertising, and a broader range of message senders. In this context, an information intermediary (such as a television broadcaster) has an incentive to encourage a large volume of messages: a higher price yields less clutter (benefiting both ad recipients and even senders) but less profit to the intermediary. One result from the analysis of competitive pricing of information access is that a tax can be optimal to curtail excess message breadth and depth. This prescription needs to be adjusted if there is market competition among message senders within the same industry. Such competition can give equilibria with price dispersion and inter-industry spillovers (across the equilibrium price distributions) in competing for attention.The third part, "Advertising: the Persuasion Game," frames the classic quality disclosure game squarely as a model of advertising - and so expands the rather limited stable of economic models of advertising - by introducing price and horizontal characteristics into the marketing decision. Two versions of the framework are considered, corresponding to different consumer behavior in different industries. If the consumer's product expectations are formed in advance of her visiting the store (as with headache medicine, for example), the corresponding "experience good" version of the model indicates that a larger degree of horizontal information should be imparted by low-quality firms. For a "search good," the consumer finds out about crucial dimensions only after visiting (for example, with airlines, the consumer must go to the web-site or telephone to find out when the flights leave). This analysis is more elaborate, and includes the decision of advertising price. It is shown that price is less likely to be advertised by high-quality firms. Data from ads for airlines and analgesics ads on TV are analyzed to test conclusions drawn from the theoretical models.