Segmentation Opportunities for a Social Planner: Impact of Limited Resources

In this research note, we investigate segmentation opportunities for social planners such as government agencies, nonprofits, and public organizations. These opportunities arise when the potential products are vertically (quality) differentiated and the consumers are heterogeneous in their preferences toward quality. In these cases, whether to offer quality differentiated products and what quality level to choose are important decisions for a social planner. In this research note, we identify the conditions where it is socially optimal to offer either one homogenous or two quality differentiated products. We find that the resource limitations may result in a single product offering and that the quality of the product depends on the maximum surplus per unit resource consumed by the products. We also compare our findings to a profit‐maximizing firm. We find that the resource limitations may cause a profit‐maximizing firm to provide a better service to some consumers than the social planner. Contrary to common wisdom, we also show that the capacity limitations may force the social planner to act like a profit‐maximizing firm in terms of its pricing and product mix choice.     

The Effect of Delayed Incentives on Supply Chain Profits and Consumer Surplus

We examine the use of consumer cash mail‐in rebates offered by a manufacturer in a Stackelberg game where the manufacturer is the leader and the retailer is the follower. Our analysis indicates that rebates are profitable for manufacturers if consumers are inconsistent in the sense that their rebate valuation when they make purchase decisions is independent of their redemption probabilities when they make redemption decisions. If the manufacturer keeps the wholesale price unchanged, then the rebate increases the retailer's profit by a larger amount than the increase in the manufacturer's profit. If the manufacturer jointly optimizes the wholesale price and rebate, then the increase in the manufacturer's profit is twice the increase in the retailer's profit. The retailer responds to rebates by increasing the retail price, which increases the margin paid by consumers who do not redeem the rebate. On average, consumer surplus decreases when it is optimal for manufacturers to offer rebates. We suggest incentive schemes that make it worthwhile for retailers to limit the price increase. In these incentive schemes, the manufacturer imposes a negative relationship between the rebate value and the retail price. We show that such incentives increase supply chain profits.     

Reducing Packaging Waste and Cost via Consumer Price Discounts

Low‐waste packaging may imply an inconvenience to consumers and cause firms to offer a compensating price discount. For example, Starbucks’ “Take the Mug Pledge” campaign provides a 10‐cent discount for customers who purchase coffee without a standard cup (i.e., customers provide their own cup). Understanding how such a discount drives demand and profit is the focus of this article. We consider a monopolist that can offer a reduced‐packaging option for its product at a variable cost savings. That option implies a transactional “inconvenience” cost for consumers. While that transactional cost is generally positive, our model also permits some consumers to associate convenience with reduced packaging. We derive the optimal price and discount that maximize profits. We show the optimal discount is bounded by the magnitude of the variable cost savings associated with the packaging reduction. We explore when the optimal discount is negative (a price premium), which requires a specific proportion of consumers to associate convenience with reduced packaging. We also derive conditions under which the firm should price to eliminate demand for the standard product, rather than segment the market, to leverage the variable cost savings of reduced packaging. When the variable cost savings are low (e.g., as is true for Starbucks), we show the profit curve for the segmenting policy is relatively flat for a discount up to several multiples of the cost differential. Finally, we demonstrate the potential for the reduced packaging option, with optimal discounting, to simultaneously increase profit and consumer surplus while reducing waste.     

A Competitive Model of Customization with Lead‐Time Effects

In this article, we study the competitive interactions between a firm producing standard products and a firm producing custom products. Consumers with heterogeneous preferences choose between n standard products, which may not meet their preferences exactly but are available immediately, and a custom product, available only after a certain lead time l. Standard products incur a variety cost that increases with n and custom products incur a lead time cost that is decreasing in the lead time l. We consider a two‐stage game wherein at stage 1, the standard product firm chooses the variety and the custom firm chooses the lead time and then both firms set prices simultaneously. We characterize the subgame‐perfect Nash equilibrium of the game. We find that both firms can coexist in equilibrium, either sharing the market as local monopolists or in a price‐competitive mode. The standard product firm may offer significant or minimal variety depending on the equilibrium outcome. We provide several interesting insights on the variety, lead time, and prices of the products offered and on the impact of problem parameters on the equilibrium outcomes. For instance, we show that the profit margin and price of the custom product are likely to be higher than that of standard products in equilibrium under certain conditions. Also, custom firms are more likely to survive and succeed in product markets with larger potential market sizes. Another interesting insight is that increased consumer sensitivity to product fit may result in lower lead time for the custom product.     

Strategic Product/Service Innovations of an Online Firm

We study the incentives that drive an online firm to make various types of innovations in a competitive environment. We develop and use a simplified price competition model between two retailers, one online and one offline. A given fraction of consumers, called the Internet penetration, comparison shop online, independent of their customer type, thereby creating two markets for the offline retailer, a captive market and a competitive market. The online product has the steeper of the two linear utility functions, which means that the customers who buy online in our model are high end. We focus on the competitive region in which both retailers are (strictly) profitable in the competitive market and consider innovations that increase high‐end appeal, low‐end appeal, and/or reduce unit cost. We find that the online firm has a strong incentive to invest in innovations that either reduce unit cost and/or, equivalently, increase the appeal to all consumers equally. Investments of this type are strategic complements: implementing one increases the value of another, so the value of two innovations of this type is more than the sum of the values of each individually. We identify a relative strength measure of the online firm such that, as its high‐end appeal increases and/or its unit cost decreases, we say that the online firm is stronger. This strength measure facilitates drawing an explicit dividing line between strong and weak online firms. If Internet penetration increases, the online firm's profits increase if and only if it is strong. If penetration increases over time, it is possible for a strong firm to turn weak and see its profits decrease and possibly disappear completely. A strong online firm has more opportunity to profit from low‐end innovations than does a weak one, while the opposite is true for high‐end innovations. Interestingly, some innovations may actually decrease the online firm's profits. We discuss the implications of our results for existing and future online innovations.     

Individual Heterogeneity and Average Welfare

Individual heterogeneity is an important source of variation in demand. Allowing for general heterogeneity is needed for correct welfare comparisons. We consider general heterogeneous demand where preferences and linear budget sets are statistically independent. Only the marginal distribution of demand for each price and income is identified from cross‐section data where only one price and income is observed for each individual. Thus, objects that depend on varying price and/or income for an individual are not generally identified, including average exact consumer surplus. We use bounds on income effects to derive relatively simple bounds on the average surplus, including for discrete/continuous choice. We also sketch an approach to bounding surplus that does not use income effect bounds. We apply the results to gasoline demand. We find tight bounds for average surplus in this application, but wider bounds for average deadweight loss.     

Consumer return policies in presence of a P2P market

Retailers selling products with valuation uncertainty often offer return policies to consumers to stimulate demand. However, some products that do not meet consumers’ expectations cannot be returned to the retailers either because of retailers’ strict restrictions on returns or because of short trial period. With the development of e-commerce, consumers who cannot return their products to retailers can resell them directly to others through electronic peer-to-peer (P2P) second-hand goods markets. This paper examines the effect of the presence of a P2P market on a retailer’s optimal return policy when the consumers are strategic and uncertain about their valuations. As a benchmark, we first examine the retailer’s optimal return policy when there is only a retailer-run resale market. Then, we analyze the retailer’s optimal return policy in presence of both the retailer-run resale market and the P2P market. Theoretical and numerical results show that, first, the presence of the P2P market is detrimental to the retailer in most cases. The presence of the P2P market is beneficial to the retailer only when the unit purchasing cost is very high, the consumers’ acceptance of products in the P2P market is relatively high and the transaction cost in the P2P market is relatively low; second, the consumer surplus is improved by the presence of P2P market; third, when the retailer-run resale market is the only second-hand products market, returned products are sold out; while in presence of the P2P market, the retailer will hold some inventory when the unit purchasing cost is very low; fourth, the selling price of new products is increased and the selling price of second-hand products in the retailer-run resale market is decreased with the emergence of the P2P market while the refund amount is increased in most cases.     

Fusion Product Planning: A Market Offering Perspective*

Devices that integrate multiple functions together are popular in consumer electronic markets. We describe these multifunction devices as fusion products as they fuse together products that traditionally stand alone in the marketplace. In this article, we investigate the manufacturer's fusion product planning decision, adopting a market offering perspective that allows us to address the design and product portfolio decisions simultaneously. The general approach adopted is to develop and analyze a profit‐maximizing model for a single firm that integrates product substitution effects in identifying an optimal market offering. In the general model, we demonstrate that the product design and portfolio decisions are analytically difficult to characterize because the number of possible portfolios can be extremely large. The managerial insight from a stylized all‐in‐one model and numerical analysis is that the manufacturer should, in most cases, select only a subset of fusion and single‐function products to satisfy the market's multidimension needs. This may explain why the function compositions available in certain product markets are limited. In particular, one of the key factors driving the product portfolio decision is the margin associated with the fusion products. If a single all‐in‐one fusion product has relatively high margins, then this product likely dominates the product portfolio. Also, the congruency of the constituent single‐function products is an important factor. When substitution effects are relatively high (i.e., the product set is more congruent), a portfolio containing a smaller number of products is more likely to be optimal.     

网络购物平台最优价格促销策略：价格折扣还是现金券？

平台价格促销已成为平台营销中的重要问题，不同于传统模式下商家决定商品的价格促销，平台价格促销是以平台作为价格促销的决策者。本文建立了平台价格折扣和现金券两种由平台作为决策者的价格促销模型，探讨平台的最优价格促销策略，并在原有模型的基础上考虑商家广告投资决策并构建了扩展模型。研究结果表明，(1)只有当商品的基本需求、消费者价格敏感度和商品价格满足一定条件时，平台价格促销才能提升平台利润。(2)在两种价格促销都能提升平台利润情况下，平台的交易费率较高且商品价格较低则平台实施现金券策略的利润高于价格折扣策略；其他情况下平台实施价格折扣策略的利润高于现金券策略。(3)在平台交易费率较低的情况下，价格折扣策略下消费者能得到更多优惠；否则现金券策略下消费者得到更多优惠。(4)增加商家广告投资能够提高平台促销活动的利润，但是平台的价格优惠降低，且平台实施价格促销活动的条件区间减小。     

基于可持续性消费的企业质量价格决策研究

随着可持续性消费理念的普及,消费者愿意为可持续性生产的产品支付更高的价格,这种绿色商品溢价能快速传导到价值链上游,进而推动绿色产业升级。本文在信息非对称环境下建立了一个可持续性制造型企业及其消费者组成的供应链模型,研究可持续性消费者比例与可持续性偏好对企业质量价格决策的影响。研究结论如下：在完全信息下,当企业只服务可持续消费者时,企业的收益随可持续性消费者比例递增;在信息非对称时,可持续性消费者比例越大,企业分离时所付出的成本越高,因此可持续性投入高的企业越倾向于混同而不是分离。另外,消费者的可持续性偏好对企业来说总是有利的。但是信息非对称时,可持续性消费者比例越高,并不总是对企业有利。     

Do Shareholders Really Prefer Their Executives to Maximize the Equity Value? A Newsvendor Case*

In this article, we study how the operational decisions of a firm manager depend on her own incentives, the capital structure, and financial decisions in the context of the newsvendor framework. We establish a relationship between the firm’s cost of raising funds and the riskiness of the inventory decisions of the manager. We consider four types of managers, namely, profit, equity, firm value, and profit‐equity maximizers, and initially assume that they may raise funds to increase the inventory level only by issuing debt. We show that the shareholders are indifferent between the different types of managers when the coefficient of variation (CV) of demand is low. However, this is not the case when the CV of demand is high. Based on the demand and the firm’s specific characteristics such as profitability, leverage, and bankruptcy costs, the shareholders might be better off with the manager whose compensation package is tied to the firm value as opposed to the equity value. We, then, extend our model by allowing the manager to raise the required funds by issuing both debt and equity. For this case we focus on the equity and firm value maximizer managers and show that our earlier results (for the debt only case) still hold subject to the cost of issuing equity. However the benefit of the firm value maximizer manager over the equity maximizer manager for shareholders is considerably less in this case compared to the case where the manager can only issue debt. The Board of Directors can take these factors into consideration when establishing/modifying the right incentive package for the managers. We also incorporate the notion of the asymmetric information to capture its impact on the board of directors’ decision about the managers’ incentive package.     

Seeking Closure: Competition in Complementary Markets*

When offering a product that has a complementary product in a different market, a firm must consider the interdependence between the complementary products as well as the competition within markets. If the firm participates in both markets, the balancing act becomes even more challenging. This article provides insights about strategies in this latter setting: when should the firm seek to keep its products closed to competing complementary products, and when would the firm be better off by accepting a common standard? To address these questions, we employ standard game theoretic analysis to a simple spatial model that captures aspects of both intermarket externalities and intramarket competition. We find that if a firm participates in both markets and chooses a closed standard, it achieves lower profits compared to an open standard, but gains greater market share. Surprisingly, we find that customers are better off when standards are kept closed.     

消费者寻求多样化与厂商折扣定价竞争

在很多市场环境中，消费者喜欢尝试不同产品的特性，重复消费同一商品会产生滞留成本。本文通过构建两期动态博弈模型，研究了滞留成本对企业折扣券定价行为的影响，并与其他定价策略的市场绩效进行了比较。本文研究结果表明：（1）企业会通过折扣券奖励忠诚的消费者，即企业会对重复购买自己产品的消费者给予价格优惠，而对新消费者制定高价格；（2）在均衡中，随着滞留成本的提升，消费者剩余和社会总福利降低，企业利润上升；（3）与其他定价机制相比较，折扣券定价策略下的社会总福利较低，政策制定者应当限制此类策略的应用。     

考虑消费者细分的网购拼单机制研究

本文提供理论模型分析网购拼单机制分别给销售者和消费者带来的影响，为销售者（消费者）的抉择提供参考。研究结果显示，当拼单价格和正常价格均很低时，销售者（消费者）无动机实施（参与）拼单机制。但随着正常价格的提高，拼单机制的营利能力（消费者剩余）会不断增大，进而激励销售者（消费者）实施（参与）拼单机制，并有会将低估价类型消费者驱逐出市场。这一结果从另一个方面反映了拼单机制的最终目标不是为了迎合低估价类型的消费者，而是为了吸引高估价类型的消费者参与交易。进一步地，在拼单机制有效实施的情形下，最优拼单数量、最优期望收益均与两种类型消费者估值比例密切相关。所以，在实施拼单机制过程中，应该有意识地对消费者进行细分，并挖掘不同类型消费者的私人信息，从而制定有效的拼单策略。     

Perfect Competition in Markets With Adverse Selection

This paper proposes a perfectly competitive model of a market with adverse selection. Prices are determined by zero‐profit conditions, and the set of traded contracts is determined by free entry. Crucially for applications, contract characteristics are endogenously determined, consumers may have multiple dimensions of private information, and an equilibrium always exists. Equilibrium corresponds to the limit of a differentiated products Bertrand game. We apply the model to establish theoretical results on the equilibrium effects of mandates. Mandates can increase efficiency but have unintended consequences. With adverse selection, an insurance mandate reduces the price of low‐coverage policies, which necessarily has indirect effects such as increasing adverse selection on the intensive margin and causing some consumers to purchase less coverage.     

Quality Provision with Heterogeneous Consumer Reservation Utilities

This study examines a firm's quality and price decisions when consumers differ not only in their willingness‐to‐pay for quality but also in their reservation utility for the basic product. We find that while the firm offers lower‐quality products when consumers' valuations for quality deteriorate, the optimal quality may increase with a negative shift in consumers' reservation utilities. We also investigate the optimal price and quality of the products within a vertically differentiated product line when the number of products is exogenously given. The existing literature shows that when consumers differ only in their willingness‐to‐pay for quality, the firm sets the efficient quality for consumers with the highest valuation for quality, whereas the concern for cannibalization pushes down the quality of inferior products. We find that when consumers are heterogeneous in both their reservation utility and valuation for quality, the concern for cannibalization may distort the quality upwards, even for consumers with the highest willingness‐to‐pay for quality. In addition, a low‐quality product may enjoy a higher profit margin than a high‐quality product within the product line.     

Nonparametric Welfare Analysis for Discrete Choice

We consider empirical measurement of equivalent variation (EV) and compensating variation (CV) resulting from price change of a discrete good using individual‐level data when there is unobserved heterogeneity in preferences. We show that for binary and unordered multinomial choice, the marginal distributions of EV and CV can be expressed as simple closed‐form functionals of conditional choice probabilities under essentially unrestricted preference distributions. These results hold even when the distribution and dimension of unobserved heterogeneity are neither known nor identified, and utilities are neither quasilinear nor parametrically specified. The welfare distributions take simple forms that are easy to compute in applications. In particular, average EV for a price rise equals the change in average Marshallian consumer surplus and is smaller than average CV for a normal good. These nonparametric point‐identification results fail for ordered choice if the unit price is identical for all alternatives, thereby providing a connection to Hausman–Newey's (2014) partial identification results for the limiting case of continuous choice.     

Competitive Bundling

This paper proposes a framework for studying competitive (pure) bundling in an oligopoly market. We find that under fairly general conditions, relative to separate sales, bundling raises market prices, benefits firms, and harms consumers when the number of firms is above a threshold (which can be small). This is in contrast to the findings in the duopoly case on which the existing literature often focuses. Our analysis also sheds new light on how consumer valuation dispersion affects price competition more generally.     

基于混合定向方式的移动定向广告投放策略研究

以移动广告为研究背景,研究地理定向和消费者产品偏好定向相结合的混合定向方式下企业的定向广告投放策略,同时通过对比企业投放定向广告与大众广告,研究企业的广告策略选择问题。研究发现,企业运用定向广告策略应针对不同的消费者群体提供差异化较大的营销策略:对属于企业近距离范围且偏好企业产品的优势市场,企业应加大广告投放力度并实行高价;为了争取部分远端劣势市场的收益,企业应向其投放一定力度的广告并实行低价;对属于双方的竞争市场,企业应选择中等程度的广告和价格。同时,通过与企业投放大众广告相比较,发现竞争企业使用定向广告策略反而不如使用大众广告策略。     

考虑消费者策略行为的供应链两周期定价与契约设计

针对由一个制造商与一个零售商构成的供应链,考虑消费者的策略性跨期购买行为,构建了两周期动态博弈模型,分析了消费者策略性程度对两周期均衡结果、消费者剩余和社会福利的影响,比较了分散式与集中式决策的均衡偏差,设计了与消费者策略性程度相关的两周期收益共享契约与"两周期收益共享+转移支付"组合式契约。研究表明：分散式决策下,消费者策略性程度有利于增加消费者剩余和社会福利,但会对供应链成员不利;某些情形下,消费者策略性程度会使分散式与集中式决策的系统利润差值增大;当消费者策略性程度相对较低时,两周期收益共享契约不仅可实现供应链完美协调,还可增加消费者剩余和社会福利;当消费者策略性程度较高时,通过组合式契约可实现供应链完美协调,但此时消费者策略性程度的增强可能对消费者剩余和社会福利产生负面影响。