Vortrag
Cooperative Customer Data Acquisition and Sharing among Rivals

Nicola Jentzsch, Geza Sapi, Irina Suleymanova

37th Annual Conference of the European Association for Research in Industrial Economics : EARIE 2010
Istanbul, Türkei, 02.09.2010 - 04.09.2010



Abstract:
We present a duopoly model of price discrimination with two-dimensional consumer het- erogeneity to analyze two types of cooperation between competitors involving customer data: joint information acquisition and information sharing. We find that incentives for both co-operation types depend on the willingness to switch brands of consumers. Firms are unlikely to jointly acquire customer data when consumers are mobile between brands. If consumers are less willing to switch brands, firms have incentives to cooperate in collecting data on the transportation cost parameters. Incentives to share information depend on the portfolio of data firms hold. Information sharing arises with both mobile and immobile consumers, and it benefits both firms and consumers in the former case, but reduces consumer welfare in the latter. Competition authorities ought to scrutinize such cooperation agreements on a case-by-case basis devoting special attention to consumer switching behavior.