We study a variant of the Hotelling-Downs model of spatial competition between firms where consumer choices are influenced by their individual preferences as well as the popularity of the firms. In general, a multiplicity of market equilibria might exist due to the popularity effect. To elucidate firm decision-making, we explore three distinct behavioral attitudes towards this multiplicity of equilibria: optimistic, neutral, and pessimistic. For each behavior, we characterize the set of Nash equilibria and measure the impact of the selfish behavior on the social welfare by means of the price of anarchy and price of stability.

翻译：我们研究了一种Hotelling-Downs空间竞争模型的变体，在该模型中，企业的消费者选择既受个人偏好影响，也受企业流行度影响。一般而言，由于流行度效应，市场均衡可能存在多重性。为阐明企业决策过程，我们针对这种均衡多重性探讨了三种不同的行为态度：乐观、中立和悲观。针对每种行为，我们刻画了纳什均衡的集合，并通过无政府状态代价和稳定代价衡量了自私行为对社会福利的影响。