Economics of Immediate Gratification in Mobile Commerce

Abstract

In this chapter we attempt to build a bridge between mobile commerce and the emerging field of behavioral economics. We first provide examples from mobile commerce and link them to behavioral economics. We then build a stylized model to assess the impact of hyperbolic discounting on the profit-maximizing behavior of a monopolist firm. We find that the monopolist makes lower profits compared to exponential discounting consumers for low levels of (positive) network externalities. As the network externalities increase, first-period prices increase, second period prices decrease and the profits increase in equilibrium.