考虑消费者网购体验滞后的产品定价研究

随着电子商务技术的发展，网络购物越来越便利。与此同时，网络购物带来的产品体验滞后也导致了消费者对产品的认知不确定性。而这种不确定性正在成为消费者策略性退货行为的主要原因，如消费者同时购买多件具有横向差异的产品，在收到货物后经亲身体验后保留一件而将其他产品退货。本文通过构建Hotelling模型，探讨了企业在考虑此种影响情况下的最优定价策略，分析得出：当消费者的退货成本增加时，企业最优定价也随之增加；消费者对产品的先验效用差异化越小，企业的最优定价也越低。同时发现，若某种产品无消费者单独购买，企业的最优定价会随消费者偏好的增加而增加；而当两种产品均有消费者单独购买且消费者退货成本较大时，企业的最优定价不但不会随消费者偏好的增加而提高，反而会随消费者偏好增加而减少。此外，本文给出了消费者策略性退货行为存在的临界条件，当消费者的退货成本高于这一临界条件时消费者的策略退货行为将消失。

Optimal Pricing Strategy Considering the Effect of Experience Delay in Online Shopping

The development of electronic commerce technology makes shopping more convenient; while at the same time, the uncertainty of consumers' preference for products occurs as a result of that the product experience-information cannot be realized immediately. In reality, consumers will further strategically purchase two or more products and then return some of them when the experience-information is realized. In this paper, two products (A and B) which have horizontal differences are sold by a firm, such as the colors or styles which do not influence the quality of the products. The consumers may buy more than one product which have horizontal differences, retain one and return the others after fitting, which is considered as strategic purchasing behavior. A Hotelling model is developed to describe the horizontal difference between the two products. Product A is assumed to be located at the point 0 and product B is located at the point 1. Consumers are uniformly distributed on the support0,1]. Purchasing utilities of three choices (purchasing product A, purchasing product B, purchasing both of them and return one after fitting) for consumers are derived, based on the expected demands and profit for the firm can be realized. Some managerial implications are obtained from the analysis of the model. First, this result shows that only when the negative effect caused by the comparison or return is small enough, the strategic return behavior occurs. Second, the price of the products decreases with the negative impact caused by the comparison or return of the consumer, while decreasing with the product's inherent differentiation awareness. Third, the price of products increases with the preference when one of the products has no solely demand and the price of product increases with the preference of the consumers under certain condition when there are consumers purchasing all products separately. Our study contributes to the theoretical basis for strategic consumers, especially in the cases where consumers have preference uncertainty.