竞争中的参考价格效应及承诺

消费者的社会感知会影响其对产品和品牌的评价。当消费者进行购买选择时，经常会受到参考价格效应的影响。而广告和价格不仅是企业经常要考虑的重要决策，还会对参考价格产生重要影响。为此，一个值得研究的的问题是：在考虑参考价格效应的情况下，企业该怎样确定其动态广告和价格策略？
为了研究该问题，本文构建了一个广告和价格的动态模型，来研究一个双寡头市场环境下两个寡头企业的价格和广告决策，并以此分析参考价格效应的作用。具体而言，我们假定企业可以采用广告承诺和价格承诺中的一种，其中前者承诺其在一段时间内的广告投入量恒定不变，而后者确保价格不变。两种策略不仅会影响消费者的购买决策，也会影响竞争对手的选择。在上述假定下，我们探讨了两个寡头企业在都采用广告承诺、都采用价格承诺及一个企业采用广告承诺而另一个企业采用价格承诺等三种不同情形下的最优广告和价格决策，并以此分析了三种情形下参考价格效应对最优的广告投入及定价策略的影响。最后，通过数值分析，探讨了不同情形下企业的最优策略选择。

Advertising and Price Decisions Considering Reference Price Effect

The social perception influences product and brand evaluations. Consumers are especially susceptible to reference price effects when they make purchase decisions for a certain product. Meanwhile, the advertising and pricing are the determinable factors that have impact on consumers' reference price which also are fundamental marketing strategies. Therefore, how to dynamically set advertising and pricing to maximize firms' profits are essential tasks.
To explore these problems, a dynamic advertising and pricing model is built in a duopoly market where two firms compete through time using pricing and advertising as their dominated marketing tools. From the aspect of firms' advertising practice and consumers' strategy behavior respectively, two alternative strategies that firms can choose are proposed. They are advertising budget (commit to an advertising budget in reference period) and price commitment (guarantee future price will remain the same in reference period). These two strategies can not only affect the decisions of consumers, but also the competitor. Three different cases' which are both firms choose the price commitment, one firm chooses the advertising budget and the other chooses the price commitment, both firms choose the advertising budget, are first explored. Explicit solutions to optimization problems are also obtained. Second, the impact of these two strategies have on firms' advertising effort, pricing and profits is analyzed. The study finds that i) the steady reference price is always higher than the steady retail price; ii) under the case in which both firms choose the advertising budget, the price changing rate is higher than that of under the case in which one firm chooses the price commitment and the other chooses the advertising budget; iii) the price strategy is also affected by the initial reference price. At last, the simulation analysis is used to illustrate in what condition and which one of the two strategies mentioned above are firms' best choice. The research results can guide firms to make dynamic advertising efforts strategy and pricing strategy in a duopoly market.