Fases 4 y 5 Evaluación de riesgos y determinación del tipo de acción

The results in this section stand in partial contrast to those in the existing literature. The findings of Lewis and Sappington (1994), Johnson and Myatt (2006) and Ottavi- ani and Prat (2001) would suggest that a seller should prefer ‘all or nothing’ launch campaigns, where buyers are allowed to discover their match type with certainty. Pro- positions 2.1 and 2.2 demonstrate that the seller never wishes to commit to ‘all or nothing’ campaigns in this setting (except when λ= u), as when µg is close to 1, in-

creases in µg will increase the probability that the campaign fails without increasing

the payoff when it succeeds.

This result is a consequence of the assumption that the seller cannot set prices, and so is not able to extract the extra surplus which might arise from a higher µg. I now

drop this assumption and allow for the seller to be a monopolist who to jointly picks their price and launch campaign. I show that allowing the monopolist full flexibility in setting their price restores the incentive to fully reveal information.

I assume that the seller is not able to condition their price on the outcome of the launch campaign. This assumption differs from Gill and Sgroi (2012), who allow conditional pricing, but is justified in this particular setting sincesi is privately observed

by each buyer, unlike a public signal of quality. Therefore, the monopolist acts in two stages: first they set their pricepand second they commit to their launch campaign by designing a signal. Buyers then observe their private signal σi, their launch signal si

and the seller’s pricep; choosing to purchase if p≤λE [θi |σi, si].

The analysis proceeds by replacing u from the previous case with p and then ex- pressing the seller’s payoff as a function ofp. Conditional on the seller’s choice ofp, the optimal launch campaign is identical to the previous case, as the seller simply wishes to maximise the number of buyers who purchase at price p, rather than subject to a reservation utilityu. I maintain the assumption that the pre-launch reviewer endows a public belief ofλand so the seller never wishes to price at p > λ.

When buyers have weak private information (α≤α¯), then Propositions 2.1 and 2.2 have shown that the seller commits to a mass market launch campaign which targets

all buyers. The payoff for the seller in this case is therefore given by p·Pr (g), where the seller charges pricep, that is accepted by all those with good signals.12

Proposition 2.3. If α ≤ α¯ and the seller has the ability to set prices then a fully revealing launch campaign is always optimal.

The insights of Lewis and Sappington (1994), Johnson and Myatt (2006) and Ot- taviani and Prat (2001) are upheld when private information is weak and the seller is able to set their price prior to launch. As in Rayo and Segal (2010), who study a model of optimal information disclosure, allowing the seller to select optimal monetary transfers from buyers makes full revelation optimal. Intuitively, full revelation ensures that buyers gain no informational rents.

This complements the basic intuitions of Lewis and Sappington (1994) and Ottaviani and Prat (2001), who consider price discriminating monopolists that have the ability to offer a menu of contracts to buyers. My model partially extends the insights of Lewis and Sappington (1994) who place restrictions on the joint distribution of signals which the monopolist can provide, and Ottaviani and Prat (2001) who allow the seller to observe a public signal of quality and condition their contracts on the result. I show that even without offering a menu of contracts, or being able to observe the outcome of the signal, that a price setting monopolist will opt to allow buyers to discover their true valuation for the product when private information is weak.

When buyers have strong private signals (α >α¯) then the seller either selects a niche campaign when µLλ < µHλ < p , giving payoff p·Pr (g, H), or a segmented campaign when µLλ < p < µHλ, giving payoff p·(Pr (b, H) + Pr (g)). It is straightforward to show that the seller’s payoff is non-decreasing in p when they run a niche campaign, yet it is harder to show this for segmented campaigns. Although I have been unable to prove this result directly, numerical computations indicate that the same conclusion as in Proposition 2.3 holds in the case when private signals are strong.

To conclude this subsection, it is the inability to extract the surplus that buyers gain from fully learning their match type which drives sellers to obfuscate details of the

12_{Clearly, settingp > µ}L

product. It should be noted however, that when the seller can price their product freely and fully reveal the product details, then all surplus is extracted from buyers. When the setting of prices is restricted, high type buyers will be able to earn an informational rent. I now move on to examine how the behaviour of external reviewers influences the seller’s campaign where the buyer’s reservation utility is again exogenously given.