講者：Prof. Rachel Chen  (UC Davis Graduate School of Management)

講者資訊：http://gsm.ucdavis.edu/faculty/rachel-chen

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

時間：2017年03月21日（二）13：30–15：00

地點：管理學院 一號館916室

報名網址： https://goo.gl/forms/xhBI4XdflPAZuAK73

Abstract： 

Consumers are often uncertain about how a product fits their individual preferences. To alleviate consumers' concern, sampling can be offered to resolve their fit uncertainties before buying.  We refer to sampling with such a focus as fit-revelation sampling. In practice, sampling is often offered jointly with advertising. Empirical research has shown sampling may enhance or weaken the effect of advertising. Built upon these studies, our paper develops an analytic model to examine whether fit-revelation sampling is complementary or substitute with persuasive and market expansion (ME) advertising, respectively. When sampling itself helps enhance the valuation added through persuasive advertising, conventional wisdom suggests that the firm might increase its advertising effort after adoption of sampling, i.e., sampling and persuasive ads are complements. However, we find that the firm might want to scale down its advertising effort in case the probability for a consumer to realize a good fit is small. On the other hand, substitutability arises whenever sampling weakens the effect of persuasive advertising.  For ME ads, complementarity arises as long as fit-revelation sampling is preferable to no sampling. Otherwise, fit-revelation sampling and ME ads are substitutes.