Strategy Map›Layer 1 · Arena›Market structure+ from outside the named canon

Information asymmetry

By Dave WhittemoreUpdated October 7, 202618 company case studies

What is Information asymmetry?

Participants have materially unequal information about the quality, value or risks of a transaction. Buyers or sellers struggle to evaluate what the other side knows.

How Information asymmetry works

Uncertainty can discourage transactions or increase the cost of evaluation. Better information and credible verification can change willingness to participate.

How companies won with Information asymmetry

From the win chains in Strategy Canon case studies: what the winner did, and what its rival did at the same step.

vs. SingleCare · 2011–14

GoodRx

One search across every discount network's local price

What it did: Launched 2011 after the founders searched for Lipitor's price and 'found basically nothing'
SingleCare: Founded 2015, four years later; one card whose prices SingleCare negotiated directly with chains for the drugs most often bought with cash

Read the GoodRx case study →

Also tagged: Airbnb · Booking Holdings · Carvana · Casper · Credit Karma · Dun & Bradstreet · Earnest · Equifax · Lyft · Match.com · Oscar Health · PayPal · Shift Technologies · Tripadvisor · Trulia · Warby Parker · Zillow

The question to ask of a company

Who knows what the other party cannot readily assess, and how does that difference affect the transaction?

Who names it

Author	What they call it / where it appears
Strategy Canon +	Editorial pattern label derived from the company entry studies

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