Increasing Dominance - the Role of Advertising, Pricing and Product Design

Despite the empirical relevance of advertising strategies in concentrated markets, the economics literature is largely silent on the effect of persuasive advertising strategies on pricing, market structure and increasing (or decreasing) dominance. In a simple model of persuasive advertising and pricing with differentiated goods, we analyze the interdependencies between ex-ante asymmetries in consumer appeal, advertising and prices. Products with larger initial appeal to consumers will be advertised more heavily but priced at a higher level - that is, advertising and price discounts are strategic substitutes for products with asymmetric initial appeal. We find that the escalating effect of advertising dominates the moderating effect of pricing so that post-competition market shares are more asymmetric than pre-competition differences in consumer appeal. We further find that collusive advertising (but competitive pricing) generates the same market outcomes, and that network effects lead to even more extreme market outcomes, both directly and via the effect on advertising

Making Connections: Teaching Information Retrieval

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In the spirit of 1992: Access to Western European libraries and literature

This exciting volume is required reading for every librarian who needs to understand the rapid changes in Western European information services resulting from the new European Community. As Western Europe moves toward a unified economic market, librarians must prepare for a corresponding unification of information services and databases. In the Spirit of 1992 provides vital information on the linkage of information services in the newly established European community. This important volume represents a commitment to increase access to an impressive European databank by an expanded global clientele. Through an elaboration of the information infrastructure supporting political, economic, social, and bibliographic interconnections among Western European nations, readers will gain a detailed understanding of this multifaceted landscape. In the Spirit of 1992 encourages the furthering of human and technological partnerships through enhanced information exchange to ensure that the world will enjoy better access to information for improved international decision making.\ud \ud Librarians will gain detailed understanding of contemporary developments in Western European librarianship from informative chapters on topics such as information policy and library status in the European Community, standardization and other cooperative strategies among libraries in Europe, bibliographic access in the United Kingdom, access to information stores in Nordic countries, access to selected European online databases, and implications of European libraries’cooperative developments for American libraries. This revelatory book features the thinking of distinguished experts on key initiatives in the European information community. Some of the important contributors to this groundbreaking volume include Harold Dierick, chair of the European Community and Associated Institutions Library Cooperation Group, Paula Goossens, chair of the European Library Automation Group, and Philip Bryant, Director of the Office for Library Networking in the United Kingdom. Reference librarians, international library consultants and planners, and library school faculty will find essential information on subjects such as the Western European information environment, past, present, and future cooperative access strategies for sharing individual resource collections across geopolitical boundaries, and recent developments in the "Plan of Action for Libraries in the European Community" in this groundbreaking book