社交媒体中企业分享奖励营销模式研究

社交媒体中用户之间的分享行为具有潜在的经济价值，因此越来越多的企业通过分享奖励模式开展社会化营销，以挖掘新用户。本文构建“嵌套”Stackelberg博弈模型，研究了企业的最优分享奖励机制设计，并对比分析了分享奖励营销模式与传统大众广告营销模式。主要研究发现，企业的最优奖励策略包括单独奖励新用户、单独奖励分享者以及同时奖励分享者和新用户三种。不同策略的选择受到价格以及用户之间社交关系的影响。当用户之间的社交关系较弱时，由打折奖励引起用户购买概率增加的“折扣作用”强于由分享奖励金引起的“推荐作用”，企业适合采用单独奖励新用户策略；当用户之间的社交关系较强时，“推荐作用”强于“折扣作用”，企业适合采用单独奖励分享者策略。同时，企业选择大众广告营销模式或者分享奖励模式受到市场渗透率和用户之间社交关系两个主要因素的影响。

The Research on Firms’ Optimal Sharing Reward Program on Social Media

Influenced by social media, more and more firms have developed sharing reward programs (SRPs) to attract potential customers. Potential customers can be reached through SRPs when existing customers refer to their friends. And the persuasion effect is more effective than mass advertisement due to the social capital among users on social media. However, the SRP can also cost the firms a lot because the bonuses are highly dependent on the successful purchase of the inductees. Thus, the main objectives of the paper are to answer the following questions: (1) Compared with traditional mass advertising marketing, whether it is more profitable to adopt SRPs? (2) How to design the optimal mechanism of SRPs? (3) How to utilize firms’ capital to stimulate the inductors to persuade their friends to purchase the products? A “nested” Stackelberg game is developed, which includes an inner game and an outer game. The inner game is between the inductor and the inductee. For the given bonus and discount, the inductor who is the leader firstly decides whether to make efforts to share information to their friend (the inductee). Then the inductee decides whether to purchase the products. The outer game is among the firm, the inductor and the inductee, where the firm acts as the game leader. Once the inner game equilibrium is reached, the firm’s optimal sharing bonus and the discount can be determined. Meanwhile the comparison of profits is made between mass advertising marketing and sharing reward program. Some interesting observations are found. First, there are optimal three kinds of reward strategies of sharing reward program, which are reward the inductee only, reward the inductor only and reward both. The choice of the strategy is relied on price and relationship between users. Second, the choice of the strategy is relied on price and relationship between users. If the relationship is weak, the impact of discount is stronger than the impact of sharing. And it is reasonable to reward the inductee only. It is on the contrary if the relationship is strong. And it is suitable to reward the inductor only. Moreover, the main factors which have influence on whether adopting direct marketing or sharing reward program are market penetration and social relationship. Taking the social relationship into consideration, the study makes some contribution to the research of sharing reward program mechanism. And it also implies that firms should take full advantage of social capital among users when deploying the capital to inductors or inductees.