喻园管理论坛2023年第25期(总第848期)

演讲主题: Search Prominence in a Distribution Channel

主 讲 人: 朱  毅，明尼苏达大学副教授

主 持 人: 关  旭，管理学院生产运作与物流管理系教授

活动时间: 2023年4月7日（周五）上午10:00-11:30

活动地点: 管理大楼219教室

主讲人简介：

Yi Zhu is an Associate Professor of Marketing, Mary & Jim Lawrence Fellow at the University of Minnesota. He received his PhD in Business Administration from the University of Southern California (USC) in 2013. He worked as a consultant at Shanghai Investment Consulting Corporation before he went to Vancouver, where he received his M.A. in Economics from University of British Columbia. His research interests focus on the application of industrial organization models in marketing, online auctions, consumer search, advertising, media slant, sharing economy and Chinese economy. His recent works have appeared or forthcoming at Marketing Science, Management Science, Journal of Marketing Research and International Journal of Research in Marketing.

活动简介：

With consumers starting their online price search from a specific retailer more frequently, we aim to determine the impact of such a prominent retailer on other channel members and consumers in a distribution channel. A search model is developed to analyze the behavior of consumers sequentially searching for the price of a branded product across multiple retailers. The results show that search prominence has two effects: First, it either reduces or intensifies price competition among retailers depending on the market structure (duopoly vs oligopoly); and second, it worsens the channel coordination between the manufacturer and the prominent retailer. The study also identifies how the relative size of costly search consumer segments and search costs can moderate these effects. In comparison with the situation without prominence, we find that (1) in a duopoly, all channel members' prices decrease in search cost. The manufacturer (prominent retailer) is always worse (better) off, whereas the non-prominent retailer is better off if the proportion of costly search consumers is low. (2) In an oligopoly, (a) whereas the wholesale price decreases in search cost, the prominent retailer's price will first increase and then decrease in search cost; (b) non-prominent retailers are always worse off; and (c) the manufacturer and the prominent retailer are worse off when the search cost is medium and the proportion of costly search consumers is high, whereas both of them can be better off when the search cost and the proportion of costly search consumers are low. (3) Although search prominence does not necessarily hurt the channel profit or social surplus, our analyses suggest it always results in a decrease in consumer surplus within a distribution channel.