We study “opaque” selling in multiproduct environments – a marketing practice in which sellers strategically withhold product information by keeping important characteristics of their products hidden until after purchase. We show that a monopolist will always use opaque selling, but it is not first-best optimal to do so. However, opaque selling might be used at the constrained optimum (with the monopolist’s pricing behavior taken as given). For linear disutility costs, it is optimal for a monopolist to offer a single opaque product.

中文翻译：

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不透明的销售

我们研究多产品环境中的“不透明”销售-一种营销实践，在该实践中，卖方通过隐瞒自己的产品的重要特征直到购买后，从战略上隐瞒产品信息。我们表明，垄断者将始终使用不透明的销售方式，但这样做并非最佳选择。但是，可以在受限的最优条件下使用不透明的销售（将垄断者的定价行为视为给定的）。对于线性无用成本，垄断者提供单个不透明产品的最佳选择。