Before revision:  When the expected quality of the product is sufficiently high , there is a unique symmetric equilibrium in which firms are fully informative. There, a small search cost leads to the perfect competition level of information provision--consumers gain when firms are forced to compete on information . Conversely, in the low and medium expected quality cases there are no pure strategy equilibria.
After revision:  When the expected quality of the product is sufficiently high (or competition is sufficiently fierce), this corresponds to full information--search frictions beget the first-best level of information provision--consumers gain when firms are forced to compete on information . Conversely, in the low and medium expected quality cases there are no pure strategy equilibria.