Shuffling as a Sales Tactic: An Experimental Study of Selling Expert Advice

We experimentally investigate the strategic interaction between a product expert and a consumer. The expert privately chooses a ranking methodology to rank two products with uncertain relative merits; the consumer decides whether to acquire the resulting ranking report to guide her product choice. The expert cares only about selling the report; the consumer derives utility from the product itself and an extra ranking attribute controlled by the expert. In equilibrium, the expert chooses sufficiently often a ranking methodology that ``shuffles," creating uncertainty in the ranking, to induce the consumer to pay to view the report. The shuffle benefits the expert but could hurt the consumer, which is observed in the laboratory. Consumers are made worse off endogenously when selling reports calls for experts to shuffle more often. With limited field data due to proprietary ranking methodologies, our study provides useful alternative evidence on how profit motives may drive fluctuations of product rankings such as those observed in university rankings.