{"title":"Consumer mistakes and advertising: The case of mortgage refinancing","authors":"Serafin Grundl, You Suk Kim","doi":"10.17016/FEDS.2017.067","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"Does advertising help consumers to find the products they need or push them to buy products they don’t need? In this paper we study the heterogeneous effects of advertising on consumer mistakes in the market for mortgage refinancing and quantify the resulting overall effect on the net present value of mortgage debt. Mortgage borrowers frequently make costly refinancing mistakes by either refinancing when they should wait, or by waiting when they should refinance. We assemble a novel data set that combines a borrower’s exposure to direct mail refinance advertising and their subsequent refinancing decisions. Even though borrowers would lose on average $1229 by refinancing, the average monthly exposure of 0.13 refinancing direct mail advertisements reduces the expected net present value of mortgage payments on average by $7 each month, because borrowers who should refinance are targeted by advertisers and more responsive to advertising. A counterfactual advertising policy that redirects all advertising to borrowers who should refinance would increase the gain in borrower welfare to $36.","PeriodicalId":46425,"journal":{"name":"Qme-Quantitative Marketing and Economics","volume":"17 1","pages":"161-213"},"PeriodicalIF":1.3000,"publicationDate":"2017-06-27","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":"6","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"Qme-Quantitative Marketing and Economics","FirstCategoryId":"96","ListUrlMain":"https://doi.org/10.17016/FEDS.2017.067","RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"管理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"","PubModel":"","JCR":"Q3","JCRName":"BUSINESS","Score":null,"Total":0}
引用次数: 6
Abstract
Does advertising help consumers to find the products they need or push them to buy products they don’t need? In this paper we study the heterogeneous effects of advertising on consumer mistakes in the market for mortgage refinancing and quantify the resulting overall effect on the net present value of mortgage debt. Mortgage borrowers frequently make costly refinancing mistakes by either refinancing when they should wait, or by waiting when they should refinance. We assemble a novel data set that combines a borrower’s exposure to direct mail refinance advertising and their subsequent refinancing decisions. Even though borrowers would lose on average $1229 by refinancing, the average monthly exposure of 0.13 refinancing direct mail advertisements reduces the expected net present value of mortgage payments on average by $7 each month, because borrowers who should refinance are targeted by advertisers and more responsive to advertising. A counterfactual advertising policy that redirects all advertising to borrowers who should refinance would increase the gain in borrower welfare to $36.
期刊介绍:
Quantitative Marketing and Economics (QME) publishes research in the intersection of Marketing, Economics and Statistics. Our focus is on important applied problems of relevance to marketing using a quantitative approach. We define marketing broadly as the study of the interface between firms, competitors and consumers. This includes but is not limited to consumer preferences, consumer demand and decision-making, strategic interaction of firms, pricing, promotion, targeting, product design/positioning, and channel issues. We embrace a wide variety of research methods including applied economic theory, econometrics and statistical methods. Empirical research using primary, secondary or experimental data is also encouraged. Officially cited as: Quant Mark Econ