喻园管理论坛2024年第21期(总第953期)

演讲主题: Competitive Pricing and Information Design in Sequential Search

主 讲 人: 许爱玲，香港科技大学商学院博士研究生

主 持 人: 关   旭，供应链管理与系统工程系主任、教授

活动时间: 2024年3月25日（周一）15:30-17:30

活动地点: 管院大楼121室

主讲人简介：

Ailing Xu is a fourth-year Ph.D. Candidate in Operations Management at the ISOM department at the Hong Kong University of Science (HKUST) and Technology, and she is supervised by Prof. Ying-Ju Chen and Prof. Qiao-Chu He. She holds a master's degree in Economics from HKUST and a bachelor's degree in Economics from Peking University. Her research interests include information economics, the OM-Marketing interface, and socially responsible operations. Her papers are currently forthcoming or under revision in leading business journals such as Manufacturing & Service Operations Management and Production and Operations Management.

活动简介：

Competitive companies often promote their products by disclosing and comparing information about their competitors, as seen in examples like Wendy's versus McDonald's and Pepsi versus Coca-Cola. This marketing strategy, known as comparative advertising, also applies to various real-world scenarios such as job hunting, school applications, and political campaigns. In this paper, we propose a sequential search model where firms compete by jointly designing pricing strategies and information provision about the competitor. We identify the asymmetric equilibrium where information disclosure plays a pivotal role in facilitating implicit cooperation between competitive firms, effectively mitigating price competition by market differentiation. Specifically, within this equilibrium, one firm attracts consumers to initiate their search by offering a lower price and utilizes information provision about the competitor to prompt immediate purchases, thereby securing a larger share of the market. Concurrently, the other firm benefits from reduced uncertainty and strengthens its market power. The provision of competitor information eliminates price competition and allows both firms to achieve at least monopoly profits. Surprisingly, the prominence of consumer search does not confer a competitive advantage to one firm over its competitor; instead, it benefits the rival firm.