TY  - UNPD
A1  - Inderst, Roman
A1  - Ottaviani, Marco
T1  - Misselling through agents
T2  - Working paper series / Institute for Monetary and Financial Stability ; 36
N2  - This paper analyzes the implications of the inherent conflict between two tasks performed by direct marketing agents: prospecting for customers and advising on the product's "suitability" for the specific needs of customers. When structuring sales-force compensation, firms trade off the expected losses from "misselling" unsuitable products with the agency costs of providing marketing incentives. We characterize how the equilibrium amount of misselling (and thus the scope of policy intervention) depends on features of the agency problem including: the internal organization of a firm's sales process, the transparency of its commission structure, and the steepness of its agents' sales incentives. JEL Classification: D18 (Consumer Protection), D83 (Search; Learning; Information and Knowledge), M31 (Marketing), M52 (Compensation and Compensation Methods and Their Effects).
T3  - Working paper series / Institute for Monetary and Financial Stability - 36 
KW  - Agency-Theorie
KW  - Verbraucherschutz
Y1  - 2009
UR  - http://publikationen.ub.uni-frankfurt.de/frontdoor/index/index/docId/7323
UR  - https://nbn-resolving.org/urn:nbn:de:hebis:30-72967
UR  - http://www.imfs-frankfurt.de/fileadmin/user_upload/pdf/WP_2009_36_Inderst.pdf
N1  - Published in: American Economic Review, 2009, vol. 99, issue 3, pp. 883-908
ER  -