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。     

奖励推荐计划口碑对接收者的影响

奖励推荐计划(Referral Reward Program)是企业给予现有顾客物质奖励,激发其向新顾客发送口碑推荐产品的新营销策略。与自然口碑相比,奖励推荐口碑复杂的发送动机影响了接收者对其评判。基于信任和关系范式理论,本文通过三个实验探究奖励推荐口碑对接收者态度和行为意向的影响。发现:(1)奖励推荐口碑对接收者购买意向的积极影响总体小于自然口碑,原因是接收者怀疑口碑信息的可信性及不能接受推荐者因获得奖励而推荐的行为;(2)口碑沟通双方的关系强度影响奖励推荐口碑的作用,相同奖励额度下强联系奖励口碑对接收者的购买意向有积极作用,而弱联系奖励口碑作用不大;(3)增强推荐者专业能力和改变奖励分配方式对改善奖励推荐计划效果具有积极作用。     

考虑顾客策略行为和产品质量的闭环供应链决策模型

策略型的顾客对于不同质量的产品以及不同时间的产品会有不同的估值和支付意愿,企业在进行决策时应当考虑顾客的策略性行为。建立了由一个制造商(即原始设备制造商)和一个独立的再制造商以及一组策略型顾客组成的闭环供应链模型,利用动态博弈理论分析了当由独立的再制造商负责回收旧产品并进行再制造时顾客策略行为和再制造品的质量水平对闭环供应链的产品价格、利润、消费者剩余的影响。研究结果表明,当顾客的策略程度增加时,制造商的利润减少,再制造商的利润和消费者剩余增加。当再制造品的质量水平增加时,制造商的利润降低,再制造商的利润先增加后降低,消费者剩余增加。     

在线评论对电商平台定价与消费者渠道选择的影响

本研究针对在线评论对电商平台定价决策以及消费者行为的影响问题,构建有无在线评论情形下电商平台与制造商之间的博弈模型,比较分析在线评论对系统均衡和消费者行为的影响。研究结果表明：电商平台的定价策略会受到在线评论的影响,当制造商直销渠道与电商平台自营渠道的竞争程度足够大,或者渠道竞争程度较小但在线评论有效性水平足够低时,电商平台才会实施低价策略;在线评论会导致利润在各企业间的重新分配,当渠道竞争程度适中时,在线评论对电商平台有利,对制造商的影响不确定。其次,在线评论的存在会影响消费者选择购买渠道,尤其是部分消费者放弃直销渠道而选择自营渠道购买产品;然而,如果在线评论有效性水平满足一定条件,则消费者参考在线评论可能会放弃购买产品,由此导致产品需求降低。此外,本文还拓展了原始模型,进一步考察电商渠道竞争问题。     

被迫好评情景下消费者后续行为意愿研究

在社交网络不断兴起的环境下,越来越多的企业试图以物质奖励促使消费者进行好评以实现口碑营销,物质奖励涉及赠品、现金、价格折扣等各种形式。企业激励口碑的活动是指一家企业对“消费者对消费者”沟通的主动管理,被广泛地应用于各类面向消费者的企业,而好评返利的口碑激励模式难免被框定于回避框架下,即消费者为了避免损失而不得不在线发布正面口碑,已有关于被动口碑传播的研究主要从积极方面探讨如何利用物质奖励促进口碑传播。 在已有研究的基础上补充物质奖励对消费者口碑影响的消极方面,以心理抗拒理论和认知一致性理论为基础,以被动口碑传播为研究视角,探讨消费者在被迫实施好评之后的后续行为意愿及其影响机制。在两个行为学实验中,分别选取在职学生和普通消费者为研究样本,通过SPSS软件进行方差分析、回归分析和Bootstrap中介效应分析。 研究结果表明,①在被迫好评的情景下,抗拒体验消极影响消费者的后续行为意愿,如降低未来的口碑推荐意愿、增加删去被迫评论意愿;②产品的实际体验与口碑内容的一致性感知积极影响后续行为意愿,这一过程受到抗拒体验的中介作用;③与抗拒特质较弱的消费者相比,抗拒特质较强的消费者更倾向于产生消极的后续行为意愿;④消费者的抗拒特质调节实际体验与口碑内容的一致性感知对后续行为意愿的影响,抗拒特质较强时一致性感知对后续行为意愿的影响较低。 研究结果为企业实施激励式口碑营销提供了理论指导,丰富和发展了口碑营销和心理抗拒理论。研究结论启示企业在使用好评返利的营销策略时,应当尽可能框定于“好评则得到”而非“不好评则损失”的框架下。如果产品或服务非常依赖于消费者的重复购买行为,那么被迫好评会消极影响消费者的整体满意度并抑制后续的购买行为。商家必须认识到被迫好评的消极影响,虽然产品或服务的积极体验可以有效抑制消费者产生消极的行为反应,但是却不会对所有消费者有效,比如那些抗拒特质较强的消费者。     

“饥饿营销”背后的消费动机分析

“饥饿营销”策略在当前营销领域使用频繁,但是效果并不是令企业十分满意,很多企业由于使用“饥饿营销”不当,不但没有获得预期利润,而且最终导致品牌形象受损,赔了夫人又折兵.事实上,企业在使用“饥饿营销”时,要提前进行消费者心理探究,分析企业当前营销策略能否引发消费者心理共鸣,能否促使消费者购买动机形成.本文对消费者心理动机进行研究,以期指导企业更好地使用“饥饿营销”策略.     

产品稀缺诉求影响消费者购买意愿的双中介模型

通过广告传播产品稀缺诉求从而影响消费者购买决策已经非常普遍，甚至已经发展成为许多厂家或商家提高价格、促进销售的重要营销策略。但目前相关研究却比较少，已有研究主要从感知稀缺性和心理抗拒感解构消费者对产品稀缺诉求的反应机制，缺乏从感知竞争性和感知欺骗性视角整合性地探索消费者应对稀缺诉求的心理反应研究，无疑限制了对消费者稀缺效应本质性和全面性的有效洞察。 产品稀缺诉求会对消费者的消费动机和消费行为产生重要影响。当呈现产品稀缺诉求时，一方面会唤起消费者的感知竞争性，从而促使消费者产生促进性的购买意愿；另一方面也会唤起消费者的感知欺骗性，从而促使消费者产生防御性的购买意愿。采用以手机为实验商品的情景模拟研究方法，运用方差分析和Bootstrap方法检验感知竞争性和感知欺骗性的中介机制以及消费者独特性需求对产品稀缺诉求影响消费者感知竞争性和感知欺骗性的调节机制，得出重要研究结论。 4个实验研究结果表明，产品稀缺诉求影响消费者的购买意愿，而且限量稀缺诉求比限时稀缺诉求更能促使消费者产生购买意愿；消费者感知竞争性和感知欺骗性分别独立部分中介产品稀缺诉求对消费者购买意愿的影响，并且均受到消费者独特性需求的调节；消费者感知竞争性和感知欺骗性共同完全中介产品稀缺诉求对消费者购买意愿的影响，而且该共同完全中介过程受到消费者独特性需求的调节。检验结果也发现限量稀缺诉求和限时稀缺诉求在诱发消费者感知欺骗性上并无显著差异。 研究结果不仅对深化和完善产品稀缺理论、感知竞争性理论和感知欺骗性理论等具有重要的理论意义，而且对指导企业正确操作稀缺营销、增强营销效果和帮助消费者正确辨识稀缺诉求动机、理性消费稀缺诉求产品有重要的实践意义。     

基于解释水平理论的直播间活跃度和产品信息诉求的匹配效应研究

基于解释水平理论,通过二手数据分析和仿真模拟实验研究,揭示直播间活跃度(高vs.低)与产品信息诉求(属性vs.利益)对消费者购买意愿的匹配效应。研究表明：(1)当直播间活跃度高时,利益诉求的产品信息更能提高消费者的购买意愿;当直播间活跃度低时,属性诉求的产品信息更能提高消费者的购买意愿。(2)感知有用性中介直播间活跃度和产品信息诉求对消费者购买意愿的影响。(3)弹幕相似性调节直播间活跃度和产品信息诉求的匹配效应,即当弹幕相似时,两种诉求策略对消费者的影响无显著差异。     

O2O外卖价格促销策略对消费者购买意愿的影响研究

O2O外卖行业如何通过差异化促销策略提升用户体验、提高购买意愿,是O2O外卖平台和餐饮商家十分关注的问题。O2O外卖常见的价格促销方式有13种,本文将其梳理归纳为三类促销策略：优惠券类、折扣类和附加服务费优惠类。基于刺激-机体-反应模型（SOR模型）,引入感知促销价值因素,建立O2O外卖价格促销策略对消费者购买意愿影响机制的理论模型;通过问卷星在线收集567份样本数据并进行结构方程模型分析,针对不同价格促销策略对潜在消费者购买意愿的影响路径和作用机制进行实证检验,并验证感知促销利益和感知促销成本的中介效应。研究结果表明,在三类价格促销策略中,优惠券类促销策略对潜在消费者购买意愿的影响最大;附加服务费优惠类促销策略对于O2O外卖消费者的购买意愿影响不大;与优惠券类促销策略直接促使消费者做出购买决策不同,折扣类促销策略下消费者需要对感知促销成本和感知促销利益进行权衡后做出最终购买决策。研究结论为O2O外卖平台和餐饮商家改进现有促销策略提供理论依据和参考。     

广告诉求与品牌个性感知差异对消费者购买意愿的影响研究

以汽车品牌为例,通过对比企业广告诉求和消费者品牌个性感知的差异,从品牌个性为消费者带来不同利益的角度探索这种差异对购买意愿的影响。实证结果表明,对于功能性和体验性品牌个性,广告诉求超出消费者品牌个性感知越多,购买意愿越低;反之亦然。对于象征性品牌个性,当消费者"圆熟"个性感知低于广告诉求时,广告诉求超出消费者感知越多,购买意愿越高。研究结论对企业的广告策略和品牌个性管理具有参考价值。     

How Long Should a Customer Wait for Service?

A major concern for service managers is the determination of how long a customer should wait to be served. Services, due to the customer's direct interaction with the process, must face a trade-off between minimizing the cost of having a customer wait and the cost of providing good service. A total cost model is presented for determining how long a customer should wait when these two conflicting cost components are considered. An integral part of this model includes a measure of customer satisfaction with waiting time which is used to develop a waiting cost function. The model is then applied to a major fast food chain, using data collected at several locations. Analysis of the data reveals that the “ideal” waiting time for this firm is significantly less than the current corporate waiting time policy. Thus, as indicated by the model, a corporate policy change is recommended to provide much faster service. The adoption of such a policy would result in increased labor costs, and would simultaneously increase the firm's overall profits. Although appearing contradictory, increases in current labor costs and long-term profits are both possible when management takes the long-range perspective suggested in this paper.     

A supplier's pricing model under a customer's economic purchasing policy

This paper develops a pricing model from the perspective of a supplier who produces and supplies a product to order from a single customer on a lot-for-lot basis. Assuming that the customer's ordering behavior is optimal, i.e. the customer follows his economic purchasing policy, the objective of the supplier is to determine the product's selling price, so that a specified gross profit goal is achieved. The algebraic interactions between the price of the product, the customer's EOQ and the supplier's profit level are taken into consideration during the model construction process. The concepts developed are illustrated through a numerical example, which attempts to demonstrate the usefulness of the model in setting an appropriate price for a product under the conditions described.     

Does a Supplier's Operational Competence Translate into Financial Performance? An Empirical Analysis of Supplier–Customer Relationships

We conduct an empirical investigation of how a supplier's operational competence, as reflected by outcomes in the areas of quality, cost, delivery, flexibility, and new product development, translates into financial gains from a key customer. In contrast to previous research directed at the firm level, this study focuses on the supplier–customer relationship level. Using survey data from 158 suppliers in the manufacturing industry, we perform structural equation modeling to map out the paths from operational competence to financial performance—via dependencies and cooperative behaviors between suppliers and their customers. This study is the first scholarly attempt to examine the link between suppliers’ operational competencies and financial performance in interorganizational relationships. It is also an early investigation into operational competence as a source of bi‐lateral dependence. Our findings show that the supplier's operational competences increase its customer's dependence by enhancing the value of its products/services. However, the resulting increase in the supplier's power is not leveraged to shape relationship behaviors or capture value from its customer. In contrast, the customer's existing power as a major buyer plays an important role in shaping cooperative behaviors and affecting the supplier's financial performance from the customer relationship.     

Competing on Time: An Integrated Framework to Optimize Dynamic Time‐to‐Market and Production Decisions

This study develops a comprehensive framework to optimize new product introduction timing and subsequent production decisions faced by a component supplier. Prior to market entry, the supplier performs process design activities, which improve manufacturing yield and the chances of getting qualified for the customer's product. However, a long delay in market entry allows competitors to enter the market and pass the customer's qualification process before the supplier, reducing the supplier's share of the customer's business. After entering the market and if qualified, the supplier also needs to decide how much to produce for a finite planning horizon by considering several factors such as manufacturing yield and stochastic demand, both of which depend on the earlier time‐to‐market decision. To capture this dependency, we develop a sequential, nested, two‐stage decision framework to optimize the time‐to‐market and production decisions in relation to each other. We show that the supplier's optimal market entry and qualification timing decision need to be revised in real time based on the number of qualified competitors at the time of market‐entry decision. We establish the optimality of a threshold policy. Following this policy, at the beginning of each decision epoch, the supplier should optimally stop preparing for qualification and decide whether to enter the market if her order among qualified competitors exceeds a predetermined threshold. We also prove that the supplier's optimal production policy is a state‐dependent, base‐stock policy, which depends on the time‐to‐market and qualification decisions. The proposed framework also enables a firm to quantify how market conditions (such as price and competitor entry behavior) and operating conditions (such as the rate of learning and inventory/production‐related costs) affect time‐to‐market strategy and post‐entry production decisions.     

Dynamic Customer Acquisition and Retention Management

In consulting, finance, and other service industries, customers represent a revenue stream, and must be acquired and retained over time. In this paper, we study the resource allocation problem of a profit maximizing service firm that dynamically allocates its resources toward acquiring new clients and retaining unsatisfied existing ones. The interaction between acquisition and retention in our model is reflected in the cash constraint on total expected spending on acquisition and retention in each period. We formulate this problem as a dynamic program in which the firm makes decisions in both acquisition and retention after observing the current size of its customer base and receiving information about customers in danger of attrition, and we characterize the structure of the optimal acquisition and retention strategy. We show that when the firm's customer base size is relatively low, the firm should spend heavily on acquisition and try to retain every unhappy customer. However, as its customer base grows, the firm should gradually shift its emphasis from acquisition to retention, and it should also aim to strike a balance between acquisition and retention while spending its available resources. Finally, when the customer base is large enough, it may be optimal for the firm to begin spending less in both acquisition and retention. We also extend our analysis to situations where acquisition or retention success rate, as a function of resources allocation, is uncertain and show that the optimal acquisition and retention policy can be surprisingly complex. However, we develop an effective heuristic for that case. This paper aims to provide service managers some analytical principles and effective guidelines on resource allocation between these two significant activities based on their firm's customer base size.     

Multi‐Product Quality Competition: Impact of Resource Constraints

We study a multi‐product firm with limited capacity where the products are vertically (quality) differentiated and the customer base is heterogeneous in their valuation of quality. While the demand structure creates opportunities through proliferation, the firm should avoid cannibalization between its own products. Moreover, the oligopolistic market structure puts competitive pressure and limits the firm's market share. On the other hand, the firm has limited resources that cause a supply‐side fight for adequate and profitable production. We explicitly characterize the conditions where each force dominates. Our focus is on understanding how capacity constraints and competition affect a firm's product‐mix decisions. We find that considering capacity constraints could significantly change traditional insights (that ignore capacity) related to product‐line design and the role of competition therein. In particular, we show that when the resources are limited, the firm should offer only the product that has the highest margin per unit capacity. We find that this product could be the diametrically opposite product suggested by the existing literature. In addition, we show that for intermediate capacity levels, whereas the margin per unit capacity effect dominates in a less competitive market, proliferation and cannibalization effects dominate in a more competitive market.     

Focusing on Customer Time in Field Service: A Normative Approach

Although customer convenience should be rightfully considered a central element in field services, the customer experience suggests that service enterprises rarely take the customer's preferred time into account in making operational and scheduling decisions. In this paper we present the results of our exploratory research into two interrelated topics: the explicit inclusion of customer time in nonemergency field service delivery decisions and the analysis of trade‐off between the customer's convenience and field service provider's cost. Based on prior research in service quality we identify and illustrate two time‐based performance metrics that are particularly appropriate for assessing service quality in nonemergency field services: performance and conformance quality. To determine vehicle routes, we develop a hybrid heuristic derived from the existing and proven heuristic methods. A numerical example closely patterned after real‐life data is generated and used within a computational experiment to investigate alternate policies for promise time windows. Our experiment shows that over a reasonable range of customer cost parameters the policy of shorter promise time windows reduces the combined total cost incurred by the provider and the customers and should be considered a preferred policy by the field service provider. Managerial implications of this result are discussed.     

Optimal Uniform Pricing Strategy of a Service Firm When Facing Two Classes of Customers

When facing heterogeneous customers, how should a service firm make its pricing decision to maximize revenue? If discrimination is allowed, then priority schemes and differentiated pricing are often used to achieve that. In many applications, however, the firm cannot or is not allowed to set discriminatory prices, for example, list price in retail stores, online shopping, and gas stations; thus a uniform price must be applied to all customers. This study addresses the optimal uniform pricing problem of a service firm using a queueing system with two classes of customers. Our result shows that the potential pool of customers plays a central role in the firm's optimal decision. Depending on the range of system parameters, which are determined explicitly by the primitive data, the firm's optimal strategy may choose to serve only one class of customers, a subset of a class of customers, or a combination of different classes of customers. In addition, the optimal price is in general not monotonic with respect to the potential market sizes because their changes may lead to a major shift in the firm's decision on which customer class to serve. However, unless such a shift occurs, the optimal price is weakly decreasing in the potential market sizes.     

TIME‐BASED PRICING AND LEADTIME POLICIES FOR A BUILD‐TO‐ORDER MANUFACTURER

We studied time‐based policies on pricing and leadtime for a build‐to‐order and direct sales manufacturer. It is assumed that the utility of the product varies among potential customers and decreases over time, and that a potential customer will place an order if his or her utility is higher than the manufacturer's posted price. Once an order is placed, it will be delivered to the customer after a length of time called “leadtime.” Because of the decrease in a customer's utility during leadtime, a customer will cancel the order if the utility falls below the ordering price before the order is received. The manufacturer may choose to offer discounted prices to customers who would otherwise cancel their orders. We discuss two price policies: common discounted price and customized discounted price. In the common discounted price policy, the manufacturer offers a single lower price to the customers; in the customized discounted price policy, the manufacturer offers the customers separately for individual new prices. Our analytical and numerical studies show that the discounted price policies results in higher revenue and that the customized discounted price policy significantly outperforms the common discounted price policy when product utility decreases rapidly. We also study two leadtime policies when production cost decreases over time. The first uses a fixed leadtime, and the second allows the leadtime to vary dynamically over time. We find that the dynamic leadtime policy significantly outperforms the fixed leadtime policy when the product cost decreases rapidly.     

Markdown Budgets for Retail Buyers: Help or Hindrance?

For many retailers, markdown decisions are taken by retail buyers whose compensation is based on sales revenue so their objective is to maximize it through the season. This implies that the buyers' objectives are not perfectly aligned with the overall profitability the firm. Many retailers set markdown budgets prior to the season to control margin erosion and increase profitability. Markdown budget constrains the buyers on the amount of discounts that they can apply on a given inventory of merchandise and sets a limit on the dollar value of markdowns for the season. While markdown budgets may be useful in preventing excessive discounts, they can have a detrimental effect on the buyers' ability to respond to poor market and remove distressed inventory. We investigate the effectiveness of this practice in aligning the incentives of buyers with that of the firm, and provide guidance on how these budgets should be established ahead of time. We consider a firm with a fixed inventory of a seasonable item, and a single chance to mark the price down. The retailer knows only the demand distribution at the beginning of the season, but the market information is revealed during the season to the buyer. We first characterize the buyer's markdown policy and understand the circumstances under which this can be different from the retailer's markdown policy. We use our model to determine the optimal markdown budget and quantify its effectiveness considering different factors such as the level of demand uncertainty, initial markup, and market's responsiveness to markdowns.