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Many of our seminars and public events this year will continue as in person or as hybrid (online and in person) events.

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Unless otherwise specified, in-person seminars are open to the public. Please ensure you have informed the event contact as early as possible.

Those unable to join the seminars in-person are welcome to participate via zoom if the event is hybrid.

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About this event

We study a growing market in which consumers must pay a cost to learn whether a firm?s product is a good fit. Prices are publicly observed, but match quality is not. Consumers face repeated purchase opportunities that arrive as a Poisson process, and their match values are persistent. In equilibrium, firms initially offer the product for free and then hike their prices over the time, with monetization occurring at an increasing rate as the market matures. This endogenous acceleration lowers consumers? outside option from re-entering search, amplifying firms? market power. Firms that monetize earlier become smaller, ?niche? providers charging higher prices, whereas firms that monetize later achieve larger scale and charge lower (though rising) prices. We characterize the equilibrium dynamics and derive testable predictions for the joint evolution of prices, churn, and firm size.