Releases as adverts : product discovery in video-games

• Autor(a) principal: Monteiro, Francisco da Costa
• Data de Publicação: 2020
• Tipo de documento: Dissertação
• Idioma: eng
• Título da fonte: Repositório Científico de Acesso Aberto de Portugal (Repositórios Cientìficos)
• Texto Completo: http://hdl.handle.net/10400.14/31199
• topic: Advertising; Product information; Imperfect information; Platforms; Publicidade; Informação sobre produto; Informação imperfeita; Plataformas; Domínio/Área Científica::Ciências Sociais::Economia e Gestão

Consumers do not have perfect information about products. Therefore, product discovery plays a key role. I use the market for video-games to estimate the causal effect of the release of a new game on the performance of an older game by the same company. I find that, in the weeks before the release, the old game underperforms, which is consistent with a substitution effect between the old and the new game. In the weeks after the release, the old game increases performance significantly, which suggests that there is a backwards information spillover. This average treatment effect can be as high as 20% in the number of owners. Overall, I find that the release of a new game serves as a advert for the old game.