臺大工商管理學系暨商學研究所

2016.12.28 作管組BBL- Prof. Ying-Ju Chen 演講邀請

講者：Prof. Ying-Ju Chen (Hong Kong University of Science and Technology)

講者資訊：http://ihome.ust.hk/~imchen/

題目：Sequential selling and information dissemination in the presence of network effects
 

時間：2016年12月28日（三）15：00–17：00

地點：管理學院 一號館２０４室

報名網址： https://goo.gl/forms/Tw69C6w7s8ww2iP72

Abstract: 

In this paper, we examine how a seller sells a product/service with a positive consumption externality, and customers are uncertain about the product's/service's value. Because early adopters learn this value, we consider the customers' intrinsic signaling incentives and positive feedback effects. Anticipating this, the seller commits to provide price discounts to the followers, and charges the leader a high price. Thus, the profit-maximizing pricing features the cream skimming strategy. We also show that the lack of seller's commitment is detrimental to the social welfare; nonetheless, the sequential selling still boosts up the seller's profit compared with the simultaneous-selling case. 

Embedding a physical network with arbitrary payoff externality among customers, we investigate the optimal targeting strategy in the presence of information asymmetry. We provide precise indices for this leader selection problem. For undirected graphs, we should simply choose the player with the highest degree, irrespective of the seller's commitment power. Going beyond this family of networks, in general the seller's commitment power affects the optimal targeting strategy. We also consider the general hierarchical design problem of information dissemination and prove the optimality of chain structure.