Price-increasing competition by heterogeneous marketing strategies

We study the price competition between two firms that have to advertise to reach buyers. We show that differences in advertising strategies can result in price-increasing competition. Advertising can be either informative or persuasive; the former informs buyers about the price of the standard good, and the latter increases buyers’ willingness to pay of the branded good. We show that when firms engage in different advertising methods, the pricing is in pure strategies, and if branding is effective, the firm using persuasive advertising asks a price that is higher than the monopoly price of the branded good (and, a fortiori, higher than the monopoly price of the standard good).