2021.4《Marketing Science》文章

1.Media Platforms’ Content Provision Strategies and Sources of Profits

作者：Wilfred Amaldoss , Jinzhao Du , Woochoel Shin

英文摘要

Some media platforms earn their profits from both consumers and advertisers (e.g., Spotify, Hulu), whereas others earn their profits from either advertisers only (e.g., Jango, Tubi) or consumers only (e.g., Tidal, Netflix). Thus, media platforms adopt divergent strategies depending on how they allocate the limited space or bandwidth between content and advertising. In this paper, we examine media platforms’ content provision strategies and their implications for the profits of media platforms as well as content suppliers, taking into account the cross-side effects of a multisided media market and the nature of competition in the content supplier market. To facilitate the analysis, we propose a model where media platforms interact with three sides: content suppliers, consumers, and advertisers. First, our analysis of a perfectly competitive content market shows that though consumers’ desire for content raises the willingness to pay, it can hurt platforms’ profits. Second, counter to our intuition, platforms’ profits can increase with the cost of procuring content. Third, advertisers’ desire for consumers reduces a monopoly content supplier’s profits under a paid-content-with-ads strategy. Fourth, a monopoly content supplier cannot extract all the profits from competing platforms. Furthermore, competing content suppliers may even charge higher prices than a monopoly content supplier. Finally, we highlight how the nature of competition in the content market shapes platforms’ choice of a no-ad strategy.

中文摘要

一些媒体平台的利润来自消费者和广告商（如Spotify、Hulu），而另一些平台的利润则来自广告商（如Jango、Tubi）或消费者（如Tidal、Netflix）。因此，媒体平台根据如何在内容和广告之间分配有限的空间或带宽而采用不同的策略。在本文中，我们研究了媒体平台的内容提供策略及其对媒体平台和内容供应商利润的影响，同时考虑了媒体市场的交叉副作用和内容供应商市场的竞争性质。为了便于分析，我们提出了一个媒体平台与三方互动的模型：内容供应商、消费者和广告商。首先，我们对一个完全竞争的内容市场的分析表明，尽管消费者对内容的渴望提高了支付意愿，但这可能会损害平台的利润。其次，与我们的直觉相反，平台的利润会随着内容采购成本的增加而增加。第三，在付费内容加广告策略下，广告商对消费者的渴望降低了垄断内容供应商的利润。第四，垄断性内容供应商无法从竞争平台中获取所有利润。此外，竞争内容供应商甚至可能收取比垄断内容供应商更高的价格。最后，我们强调内容市场的竞争性质如何影响平台选择无广告策略。

2.Pricing Under Dynamic Competition When Loyal Consumers Stockpile

作者：Manish Gangwar , Nanda Kumar, Ram C. Rao

英文摘要

One goal of promotions for frequently purchased products is increasing short-term sales. Increases could be at competitors’ expense, coming from consumers with relatively weak brand preferences. However, increased sales from brand-loyal consumers could well cannibalize future sales of the promoted brand. An unintended consequence of promotions is that loyal consumers otherwise willing to pay high prices may strategically stockpile at low prices. What is its impact on firms’ profits? Who benefits from stockpiling? How should firms adapt their pricing to accommodate consumer stockpiling? For answers, we analyze an infinite horizon dynamic model of competition and derive the Markov perfect equilibrium pricing strategies that yield several managerial insights. We find strategic stockpiling does not reduce firms’ long-run profits when managers adopt pricing strategies we identify. Turning to strategies, stockpiling causes firms to move away from frequently promoting below the stockpiling threshold, but it leads to mass points at reservation price and stockpiling threshold. Stockpiling is beneficial to consumers who stockpile but hurts those that do not stockpile, whereas switchers remain largely unaffected. State-dependent pricing as a result of stockpiling leads to positive intertemporal price correlation, implying, counterintuitively, that in equilibrium, deep promotions should be followed by deep promotions.

中文摘要

经常购买产品的促销目标之一是增加短期销售额。价格上涨可能是以竞争对手为代价的，因为消费者对品牌的偏好相对较弱。然而，来自品牌忠诚消费者的销售增长很可能会蚕食推广品牌的未来销售。促销的一个意想不到的结果是，忠诚的消费者，否则愿意支付高价可能会战略性地囤积在低价。它对公司的利润有什么影响？谁从储备中受益？企业应该如何调整定价以适应消费者的需求？为了得到答案，我们分析了一个无限期动态竞争模型，并导出了马尔可夫完全均衡定价策略，从而产生了一些管理见解。我们发现，当管理者采用我们确定的定价策略时，战略储备并不会降低公司的长期利润。在策略方面，库存导致企业不再频繁地在库存阈值以下促销，而是导致在保留价格和库存阈值处出现质量点。囤积对囤积的消费者是有益的，但对那些没有囤积的消费者是有害的，而转换者基本上不受影响。库存导致的国家依赖性定价导致了正的跨期价格相关性，这与直觉相反，意味着在均衡状态下，深度促销之后应该是深度促销。

3.Can Non-tiered Customer Loyalty Programs Be Profitable?

作者：Arun Gopalakrishnan , Zhenling Jiang , Yulia Nevskaya , Raphael Thomadsen

英文摘要

We study the impact of launching a non-tiered customer loyalty program on consumers’ spending per visit, frequency of visits and attrition rates, and overall customer value. We demonstrate these results both through descriptive difference-in-difference regressions and a duration-dependent hidden Markov model we develop. We find that the program increases customer value by almost 30% over a five-year horizon, which is considerably larger than has been previously found for non-tiered loyalty programs. Most of the impact of the loyalty program comes through attrition: we show that the program’s reduction in attrition accounts for more than 80% of the program’s total lift, whereas increased frequency accounts for less than 20% of the program’s lift. The program’s lift is highest for least and most frequent automatic members, who experience reductions in attrition rates after joining the program. The impact of the loyalty program on spending per visit is negligible.

中文摘要

我们研究了推出非分层客户忠诚度计划对消费者每次访问的支出、访问频率和损耗率以及总体客户价值的影响。我们通过差分回归的描述性差异和我们开发的一个持续时间相关隐马尔可夫模型来证明这些结果。我们发现，该计划在五年期内将客户价值提高了近30%，这比以前发现的非分层忠诚度计划要大得多。忠诚度计划的影响大部分来自于损耗：我们表明，该项目的损耗减少占项目总升力的80%以上，而增加的频率占项目提升的20%以下。该项目的升力对于最少和最频繁的自动成员来说是最高的，他们在加入该计划后经历了减少损耗率的经历。忠诚度计划对每次访问的支出影响微不足道。

4.The Fateful First Consumer Review

作者：Sungsik Park , Woochoel Shin , Jinhong Xie 

英文摘要

This paper uncovers the striking power of a product’s first consumer review. Our analytical model suggests that two key metrics of online consumer reviews, valence and volume, are not independent, but instead evolve interdependently. This interdependence forms a mechanism to transfer a (dis)advantage from a product’s first review to both a long-lasting (dis)advantage in future word-of-mouth (WOM) valence and an increasing (dis)advantage in future WOM volume. As a result, a single consumer review can significantly influence the fate of a given product. These theoretical predictions, although seemingly unlikely, are supported by our empirical investigations. For example, more than 30% of vacuum cleaner models offered by both Amazon.com and BestBuy.com receive first reviews of opposite valence on the two platforms. Those with a negative first review subsequently suffer a loss in both valence and volume vis-à-vis their counterparts with a positive first review, even after 36 months. More strikingly, the first-review effect on WOM volume increases over time. Our findings reveal a crucial weakness in the user-generated information mechanism. As a consumption-based information source, it creates an information-availability bias such that when a product receives a negative first review, it not only suffers low initial sales, but also loses the opportunity to correct the possible negative bias via subsequent reviews. These findings have substantial implications for online sellers, e-commerce platform providers, and consumers.

中文摘要

本文揭示了产品第一次消费者评论的惊人力量。我们的分析模型表明，在线消费者评论的两个关键指标，价格和数量，不是独立的，而是相互依赖的。这种相互依赖形成了一种机制，将产品的第一次审查的（dis）优势转化为未来口碑（WOM）价值的持久（dis）优势和未来口碑数量的增加（dis）优势。因此，单一的消费者评论可以显著地影响给定产品的命运。这些理论预测，虽然看似不太可能，但得到了我们的实证研究的支持。例如，超过30%的吸尘器型号都是由这两家公司提供的亚马逊网站以及百思买网站在两个平台上接收对价的第一次评论。那些第一次审查结果为阴性的人与第一次审查结果为阳性的人相比，即使在36个月之后，价格和数量也会有所下降。更引人注目的是，第一次回顾对口碑量的影响随着时间的推移而增加。我们的发现揭示了用户生成信息机制的一个关键弱点。作为一种基于消费的信息源，它产生了一种信息可用性偏差，使得当一个产品收到负面的第一次审查时，它不仅遭受了低的初始销售，而且失去了通过后续审查纠正可能的负面偏差的机会。这些发现对在线销售商、电子商务平台提供商和消费者具有重要意义。

5.A Dynamic Model of Optimal Retargeting

作者：J. Miguel Villas-Boas , Yunfei (Jesse) Yao

英文摘要

A consumer searching for information on a product may be indicative that the consumer has some interest in that product but is still undecided about whether to purchase it. Some of this consumer search for information is not observable to firms, but some may be observable. Once a firm observes a consumer searching for information on its product, the firm may then want to try to provide further information about the product to that consumer, a phenomenon that has been known in electronic commerce as retargeting. Firms may not observe all activities by a consumer in searching for information, may not be able to observe the information gained by consumers, and may not be able to observe whether a consumer stopped searching for information. A consumer could stop searching either because he received information of poor fit with the product, because he bought the product (which may be unobservable to the firm), or because he exogenously lost interest in the product. This paper presents a dynamic model with these features characterizing the optimal advertising retargeting strategy by the firm. We find that a forward-looking firm can advertise more or less than a myopic firm to gain more information about whether the consumer is searching for information, advertising more if the effect of advertising is relatively high. We characterize how the optimal advertising retargeting strategy is affected by the ability of the firm to observe when the consumer purchases the product, when the firm is better able to observe the consumer search behavior, and by the informativeness of the signal received by the consumer. We find that better tracking of consumer search behavior could be beneficial for consumers, because it may reduce the length of time when a consumer receives retargeting, but that it also enlarges the region of firm’s beliefs where retargeting is optimal. Finally, we also find that the value of retargeting is highest for an intermediate value of the likelihood of the consumer receiving an informative signal and that retargeting may allow the firm to charge higher prices if consumers are forward-looking.

中文摘要

消费者搜索某一产品的信息可能表明该消费者对该产品有某种兴趣，但仍未决定是否购买该产品。消费者对信息的搜索有些是公司无法观察到的，但有些是可以观察到的。一旦公司观察到消费者在搜索其产品的信息，公司可能会试图向该消费者提供有关该产品的更多信息，这种现象在电子商务中被称为重定目标。企业可能无法观察消费者在搜索信息时的所有活动，可能无法观察消费者获得的信息，也可能无法观察消费者是否停止搜索信息。消费者可以停止搜索，要么是因为他收到了与产品不匹配的信息，要么是因为他购买了产品（公司可能无法观察到），要么是因为他对产品失去了兴趣。本文提出了一个具有这些特征的动态模型来描述企业的最优广告重定目标策略。我们发现，一个前瞻性的公司可以比一个短视的公司做更多或更少的广告来获得更多关于消费者是否在寻找信息的信息，如果广告的效果相对较高的话，广告会更多。我们描述了当消费者购买产品时，企业观察消费者搜索行为的能力，以及消费者接收到的信号的信息性如何影响最优广告重定位策略。我们发现，更好地跟踪消费者的搜索行为可能有利于消费者，因为它可以缩短消费者收到重定目标的时间，但它也扩大了公司的信念区域，其中重定目标是最佳的。最后，我们还发现，重定目标的价值是最高的中间值的可能性，消费者收到一个信息的信号，重定目标可能会让公司收取更高的价格，如果消费者是前瞻性的。

6. Endogenous Evaluation and Sequential Search

作者：Liang Guo

英文摘要

Consumers may not be perfectly informed of the availability and attributes of competitive offerings (price, match value). We examine equilibrium outcomes when consumers can search among potential options and invest evaluation efforts to resolve product value uncertainty by endogenizing the information structure in the canonical model of sequential search with horizontal differentiation. We show that consumers’ joint decisions on search and evaluation interact in an asymmetric manner. That is, greater evaluation pushes up the search-terminating threshold, whereas a higher stopping threshold first increases and then decreases the incentive for evaluation. As a result, changes in the search/evaluation cost may exert unusual influences on equilibrium behaviors and payoffs. Both the impact of the search cost on optimal evaluation and that of the evaluation cost on expected number of searched products exhibit an inverted U pattern. Because of endogenous evaluation, the equilibrium price and profit can vary nonmonotonically with the search/evaluation cost. This implies that we may observe the coexistence of consumers searching fewer products and firms charging lower prices as sampling becomes more costly. Moreover, consumers can benefit from more costly sampling. We discuss how these findings can shed light on strategic design of shopping environment, user acquisition/retention, and empirical research.

中文摘要

消费者可能无法完全了解竞争产品的可用性和属性（价格、匹配值）。我们研究了当消费者可以在潜在的选择中进行搜索时的均衡结果，并通过内生化水平差异序贯搜索的标准模型中的信息结构来投资评估努力来解决产品价值的不确定性。我们表明消费者’ 关于搜索和评估的联合决定以不对称的方式相互作用。也就是说，较大的评估会推高搜索终止阈值，而较高的停止阈值会先增加然后降低评估的动机。因此，搜索/评估成本的变化可能会对均衡行为和收益产生不寻常的影响。搜索成本对最优评价的影响和评价成本对期望搜索产品数的影响均呈倒U型。由于内生评价的存在，均衡价格和均衡利润会随着搜索/评价成本的变化而非单调变化。这意味着，随着抽样成本的增加，我们可能会观察到消费者搜索较少产品和公司收取较低价格的共存。此外，消费者可以从更昂贵的抽样中获益。我们将讨论这些发现如何为购物环境的策略设计、用户获得/保留以及实证研究提供启示。

7.Understanding Large-Scale Dynamic Purchase Behavior

作者：Bruno Jacobs , Dennis Fok , Bas Donkers 

英文摘要

In modern retail contexts, retailers sell products from vast product assortments to a large and heterogeneous customer base. Understanding purchase behavior in such a context is very important. Standard models cannot be used because of the high dimensionality of the data. We propose a new model that creates an efficient dimension reduction through the idea of purchase motivations. We only require customer-level purchase history data, which is ubiquitous in modern retailing. The model handles large-scale data and even works in settings with shopping trips consisting of few purchases. Essential features of our model are that it accounts for the product, customer, and time dimensions present in purchase history data; relates the relevance of motivations to customer- and shopping-trip characteristics; captures interdependencies between motivations; and achieves superior predictive performance. Estimation results from this comprehensive model provide deep insights into purchase behavior. Such insights can be used by managers to create more intuitive, better informed, and more effective marketing actions. As scalability of the model is essential for practical applicability, we develop a fast, custom-made inference algorithm based on variational inference. We illustrate the model using purchase history data from a Fortune 500 retailer involving more than 4,000 unique products.

中文摘要

在现代零售环境中，零售商销售的产品从庞大的产品种类到庞大的异质客户群。在这样的背景下理解购买行为是非常重要的。由于数据的高维性，不能使用标准模型。我们提出了一个新的模型，通过购买动机的思想，创建一个有效的降维。我们只需要客户级别的购买历史数据，这在现代零售业中无处不在。该模型可以处理大规模数据，甚至可以在购物行程很少的情况下工作。我们模型的基本特征是，它考虑了购买历史数据中的产品、客户和时间维度；将动机的相关性与客户和购物出行特征联系起来；捕捉动机之间的相互依赖性；并实现了卓越的预测性能。这个综合模型的估计结果提供了对购买行为的深刻见解。管理者可以利用这些见解来创建更直观、更灵通、更有效的营销行动。由于模型的可扩展性对实际应用至关重要，我们开发了一种基于变分推理的快速定制推理算法。我们利用一家财富500强零售商的购买历史数据说明了该模型，该零售商涉及4000多种独特的产品。

8.Scalable Optimal Online Auctions

作者：Dominic Coey, Bradley J. Larsen , Kane Sweeney, Caio Waisman 

英文摘要

This paper studies reserve prices computed to maximize the expected profit of the seller based on historical observations of the top two bids from online auctions in an asymmetric, correlated private values environment. This direct approach to computing reserve prices circumvents the need to fully recover distributions of bidder valuations. We specify precise conditions under which this approach is valid and derive asymptotic properties of the estimators. We demonstrate in Monte Carlo simulations that directly estimating reserve prices is faster and, outside of independent private values settings, more accurate than fully estimating the distribution of valuations. We apply the approach to e-commerce auction data for used smartphones from eBay, where we examine empirically the benefit of the optimal reserve and the size of the data set required in practice to achieve that benefit. This simple approach to estimating reserves may be particularly useful for auction design in Big Data settings, where traditional empirical auctions methods may be costly to implement, whereas the approach we discuss is immediately scalable.

中文摘要

本文研究了在非对称的、相关的私人价值环境下，基于对网上拍卖中前两个出价的历史观察，以卖方期望利润最大化为目标计算的保留价格。这种直接计算储备价格的方法避免了完全恢复投标人估值分布的需要。我们指定了精确的条件下，这种方法是有效的，并得出渐近性质的估计。我们在montecarlo模拟中证明，在独立的私人价值设定之外，直接估计储备价格比完全估计估值分布更快，更准确。我们将这种方法应用于eBay二手智能手机的电子商务拍卖数据，从经验上检验了最佳储备的好处以及实现这种好处所需的数据集的大小。这种估算储量的简单方法可能对大数据环境下的拍卖设计特别有用，因为传统的经验拍卖方法实施起来可能成本高昂，而我们讨论的方法可以立即扩展。