{"status":"ok","message-type":"work","message-version":"1.0.0","message":{"indexed":{"date-parts":[[2025,10,3]],"date-time":"2025-10-03T00:41:00Z","timestamp":1759452060536,"version":"build-2065373602"},"reference-count":47,"publisher":"Institute for Operations Research and the Management Sciences (INFORMS)","issue":"10","content-domain":{"domain":[],"crossmark-restriction":false},"short-container-title":["Management Science"],"published-print":{"date-parts":[[2025,10]]},"abstract":"<jats:p> Collaborative customization is common in many markets. Sellers and customers can collectively discover the value of the product\u2019s basic design. Customers\u2019 willingness to pay can also be increased by being engaged to improve the product design. We study how a seller can design the information structure of collective learning about the product\u2019s basic value to induce costly customer engagement. We consider a setting in which the parties\u2019 expected payoffs are determined endogenously through the strategic interaction between seller pricing and customer engagement and purchase. The customer tends to be engaged in equilibrium, as the uncertainty on the product\u2019s basic value becomes higher to dilute the responsiveness of the optimal price to customer engagement. Therefore, the seller seeks to maximize the probability of generating an intermediate posterior belief. Thus, the optimal information design involves either exaggerating or downplaying the product\u2019s basic value when the prior is low or high, respectively. We show that considering restrictive information structures can generate qualitatively different implications. We also examine how the unobservability of engagement may influence the parties\u2019 strategic interaction, their expected payoffs, and the seller-optimal information design. Interestingly, unobservability may lead to lower equilibrium engagement, hurt the seller, render the customer\u2019s equilibrium expected payoff to increase as customer engagement becomes less important or more costly, and yield more or less information provision. <\/jats:p><jats:p> This paper was accepted by Dmitri Kuksov, marketing. <\/jats:p>","DOI":"10.1287\/mnsc.2022.03503","type":"journal-article","created":{"date-parts":[[2025,1,20]],"date-time":"2025-01-20T08:44:10Z","timestamp":1737362650000},"page":"8169-8187","source":"Crossref","is-referenced-by-count":0,"title":["Designing Information to Engage Customers"],"prefix":"10.1287","volume":"71","author":[{"ORCID":"https:\/\/orcid.org\/0000-0003-1315-0019","authenticated-orcid":false,"given":"Liang","family":"Guo","sequence":"first","affiliation":[{"name":"Department of Marketing, City University of Hong Kong, Kowloon, Hong Kong, China"}]}],"member":"109","reference":[{"doi-asserted-by":"publisher","key":"B1","DOI":"10.1257\/aer.20210083"},{"volume-title":"Repeated Games with Incomplete Information","year":"1995","author":"Aumann RJ","key":"B2"},{"issue":"4","key":"B3","first-page":"786","volume":"29","author":"Basu A","year":"2018","journal-title":"Management Sci."},{"doi-asserted-by":"publisher","key":"B4","DOI":"10.1257\/jel.20181489"},{"doi-asserted-by":"publisher","key":"B5","DOI":"10.1086\/699211"},{"doi-asserted-by":"publisher","key":"B6","DOI":"10.1509\/jm.16.0113"},{"doi-asserted-by":"publisher","key":"B7","DOI":"10.1086\/704574"},{"doi-asserted-by":"publisher","key":"B9","DOI":"10.1287\/mnsc.49.8.1055.16401"},{"doi-asserted-by":"publisher","key":"B10","DOI":"10.1111\/1756-2171.12411"},{"doi-asserted-by":"publisher","key":"B11","DOI":"10.1287\/mnsc.2022.4305"},{"doi-asserted-by":"publisher","key":"B12","DOI":"10.1287\/mnsc.1090.1077"},{"doi-asserted-by":"publisher","key":"B13","DOI":"10.1093\/restud\/rdw052"},{"volume-title":"Game Theory for Applied Economists","year":"1992","author":"Gibbons RS","key":"B14"},{"issue":"1","key":"B15","first-page":"91","volume":"75","author":"Gilmore JH","year":"1997","journal-title":"Harvard Bus. 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