Can Merchants Benefit from Entry by (Amazon-Like) Platform if Multiagent Prices Signal Quality?

The authors thank Nanda Kumar, Upender Subramanian, Samir Mamadehussene, Liang Guo, Qihong Liu, Duncan Simester, and Dai Liang as well as participants of Texas Economic Theory Camp 2019 and SICS 2023 for comments and feedback on earlier versions. The authors are grateful for discussions with Srihari Govindan and the many suggestions of reviewers, the area editor, and especially senior editor Yuxin Chen of Marketing Science, all of which improved the paper. Remaining shortcomings are those of the authors. This paper is an outgrowth of a chapter of Ye Qiu’s doctoral dissertation at Naveen Jindal School of Management, The University of Texas at Dallas.