Journal of Political Economy Vol. 131 No. 1 2023
Collective Brand Reputation
Abstract
We develop a theory of collective brand reputation for markets in which product quality is jointly determined by local and global players. In a repeated game of imperfect public monitoring, we model collective branding as an aggregation of quality signals generated in different markets. Such aggregation yields a beneficial informativeness effect for incentivizing the global player. It however also induces harmful free-riding by local, market-specific players. The resulting trade-off yields a theory of optimal brand size and revenue sharing that applies to platform markets, franchising, licensing, umbrella branding, and firms with team production.
- DOI
- 10.1086/720986
- Volume
- 131
- Issue
- 1
- Pages
- 1-58
- Language
- en
- Sources
- bibtex:phds-export.bib openalex crossref