2023/07/14 by Xiaotie Deng, Deng, Xiaotie, Gan, Hangxin +6
Business, Management and Accounting · Decision Sciences · Economics, Econometrics and Finance · #Computer Science and Game Theory (cs.GT) #Consumer Market Behavior and Pricing #FOS: Computer and information sciences #Game Theory and Applications #Game Theory and Voting Systems
paper · pdf · doi:10.48550/arxiv.2307.07174
openalex publication_date 2023/07/14 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/28
We introduce a game model called "customer attraction game" to demonstrate the competition among online content providers. In this model, customers exhibit interest in various topics. Each content provider selects one topic and benefits from the attracted customers. We investigate both symmetric and asymmetric settings involving agents and customers. In the symmetric setting, the existence of pure Nash equilibrium (PNE) is guaranteed, but finding a PNE is PLS-complete. To address this, we propose a fully polynomial time approximation scheme to identify an approximate PNE. Moreover, the tight Price of Anarchy (PoA) is established. In the asymmetric setting, we show the nonexistence of PNE in certain instances and establish that determining its existence is NP-hard. Nevertheless, we prove the existence of an approximate PNE. Additionally, when agents select topics sequentially, we demonstrate that finding a subgame-perfect equilibrium is PSPACE-hard. Furthermore, we present the sequential PoA for the two-agent setting.