This paper extends the literature on simultaneous search by allowing for differentiated products and consumer search cost heterogeneity. In a duopolistic market, consumers with sufficiently low search costs choose to inspect the products of the two firms and purchase, if any, the most suitable; consumers with higher search costs choose to examine just one of the products; consumers with prohibitively high search costs do not check any of the products and drop out of the market altogether. We show conditions under which a symmetric price equilibrium always exists. We provide a necessary and sufficient condition on the search cost distribution under which an increase in the costs of search of all consumers may result in a lower, equal or higher equilibrium price. We extend this analysis to the case with more than two firms. The effects of prominence on equilibrium prices are also studied. The prominent firm charges a higher price than the non-prominent firm and both their prices are below the symmetric equilibrium price. Consequently, with simultaneous search, market prominence increases the surplus of consumers.

中文翻译：

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同时搜索差异化产品：搜索成本和公司知名度的影响*

本文通过允许差异化产品和消费者搜索成本异质性扩展了有关同时搜索的文献。在双头垄断市场中，具有足够低搜索成本的消费者选择检查两家公司的产品并购买（如果有的话）最合适的；搜索成本较高的消费者选择只查看其中一种产品；搜索成本高得令人望而却步的消费者不会检查任何产品并完全退出市场。我们展示了对称价格均衡始终存在的条件。我们提供了搜索成本分布的充分必要条件，在该条件下，所有消费者搜索成本的增加可能导致更低、相等或更高的均衡价格。我们将此分析扩展到超过两家公司的案例。还研究了显着性对均衡价格的影响。知名企业比非知名企业收取更高的价格，并且它们的价格都低于对称均衡价格。因此，在同时搜索的情况下，市场突出增加了消费者的剩余。