@article{publications33636,
          volume = {vol. 57},
           month = {December},
          author = {Timothy J. Richards and Gordon Klein and C{\'e}line Bonnet and Zohra Bouamra-Mechemache},
           title = {Strategic Obfuscation and Retail Pricing},
       publisher = {Kluwer},
         journal = {Review of Industrial Organization},
           pages = {859--889},
            year = {2020},
             url = {https://publications.ut-capitole.fr/id/eprint/33636/},
        abstract = {Consumer-product manufacturers{--}and retailers that sell their products{--}often sell slightly differentiated items for reasons other than appealing to heterogeneous tastes{--}different sizes of a popular brand, or different flavors in a common product line for instance. We argue that this practice is a form of strategic obfuscation, which is intended to make price-comparison more difficult, and thereby raise margins on non-comparable products. We test our hypothesis with the use of examples from consumer-packaged good categories in German and French retail scanner data. We find that{--}after controlling for other explanations for how margins can vary with package size and type{--}we cannot rule out strategic obfuscation as a feature of our retail sales data.}
}