团队

Firms must often decide whether to disclose private information regarding their costs to other market participants. Although extant literature has explored firms’ incentives to disclose exogenous and uncertain costs, little is known about when their endogenous costs should be disclosed. This paper studies the cost-disclosure strategies of competing firms whose inputs are sourced from and endogenously priced by upstream suppliers. We find, first, that cost disclosure affects not only market competition but also the motivations of suppliers in setting their input prices. As such, firms can strategize their disclosure decisions to optimize their procurement costs. Second, we find that firms’ disclosure decisions vary depending on both the nature of the competition and the market structure at hand. That is, when competing firms source from the same supplier or compete on price, they never disclose their costs; in such a case, nondisclosure is strictly better for consumers and welfare compared with disclosure. When competing firms source from different suppliers and compete on quantity, they always disclose; in such a case, disclosure is strictly better for consumers and welfare compared with nondisclosure. We also find that whereas manufacturers’ disclosure incentives are misaligned with those of suppliers, they are largely aligned with the goal of maximizing channel profits. Together, our results underscore the distinct role that endogenous costs play in firms’ disclosure decisions.

To balance the need for privacy and the benefits of big-data analytics, regulators around the world are giving consumers control over their data, allowing them to choose whether or not to voluntarily share their purchase history data with firms. Intuition suggests that voluntary data sharing only benefits consumers who can now choose to share their data only when it is profitable to do so. To investigate this argument, we build a model in which a monopolistic firm sells a repeatedly purchased product to consumers over two periods, and consumers decide whether or not to share their purchase history data with the firm, who can use it in the future to price discriminate against them. We find that, compared to when data collection is completely outlawed, voluntary data sharing can benefit the firm but at its consumers’ expense. Moreover, regulations that mandate firms to better protect consumer data against data breaches can backfire on consumers. Finally, we show that under voluntary data sharing, a firm’s ability to offer consumers a monetary incentive to share their data can improve profits without hurting consumers. Taken together, these findings underscore the surprising effects of voluntary data sharing and caution public policymakers of how certain data policies that, on the surface, seem purely beneficial can lead to unintended consequences.

We consider the role of personalized pricing (PP) on product differentiation when PP is costly to implement. Using a stylized yet commonly used formulation, we find that when firms decide on positioning before deciding on PP implementation, PP implementation cost affects not only the amount of differentiation firms choose in their positioning, firm profits, consumer surplus, and social welfare, but also whether firms implement PP. When PP implementation cost is low, firms cannot help but to implement PP and engage in direct price competition. Moreover, firms implementing PP reduce their differentiation, further intensifying price competition, and are worse off. When PP implementation cost is moderate, firms position to reduce their differentiation to commit to not implementing PP, again aggravating price competition. In contrast, when PP implementation cost is higher, firms increase their differentiation due to the threat of PP but do not implement PP. As a result, the availability of PP improves firm profits, even though firms do not implement PP. However, if differentiation is restricted, then PP availability cannot improve firm profits. If an information seller sets the PP implementation cost, then it sets the cost low. Consequently, firms implement PP and are worse off. We also find that when firms decide whether to implement PP before deciding on positioning, they never implement PP. This is the case when PP implementation is complex, and differentiation can be affected by short-run advertising and promotion. Finally, we show that banning PP can benefit consumers when accounting for changes in firm positioning.

Modern consumers are concerned about not only their material payoff, but also the fairness of the transaction when making purchasing decisions. In this paper, we investigate how consumers’ inequity aversion affects a manufacturer who sources inputs from upstream suppliers. We find that, when the manufacturer sources from a single supplier or when consumers observe the manufacturer’s cost, inequity aversion hurts both the supplier’s and manufacturer’s profits. However, when the manufacturer sources from multiple suppliers and consumers do not observe the manufacturer’s cost, inequity aversion reduces both the suppliers’ and manufacturer’s margins, which significantly alleviates the double marginalization problem, increases consumer demand, and improves channel efficiency. As a result, inequity aversion benefits the suppliers, manufacturer, and consumers alike, leading to a “win–win–win” outcome. By comparing cases in which consumers observe and do not observe the manufacturer’s cost, we also find that, when faced with inequity-averse consumers, a manufacturer may find it optimal to withhold its cost information to help secure lower procurement costs from upstream suppliers.

Manufacturers of consumer-packaged goods invest heavily in trade promotions (i.e., temporary wholesale price discounts), but retailer stockpiling often yields trade promotions unprofitable. In this paper, we investigate how a manufacturer should respond to the retailer’s and consumers’ stockpiling ability by contracting with the retailer. Specifically, we examine when the manufacturer should restrict the retailer’s stockpiling ability and when it should issue trade promotions. Our analysis suggests the following. First, the manufacturer should restrict the retailer’s stockpiling ability when the storage cost is low; such restriction also benefits the retailer, resulting in a win-win outcome. Second, the manufacturer should offer trade promotions when the retailer cannot stockpile products and the storage cost is low but raise the wholesale price when the retailer can stockpile products. Third, stockpiling improves channel coordination and increases the manufacturer’s profit; therefore, the manufacturer should design products to be more storable.

Manufacturers and retailers often advance sell seasonal products or services (e.g., holiday decorations, summer or winter entertainment). The authors examine advance selling in marketing channels to offer several insights. First, it is well established that a decentralized channel suffers from the issue of double marginalization; that is, the manufacturer and retailer both add positive margins when setting their prices, which results in inefficiently high retail prices. The authors find that, under a dynamic wholesale-price contract, advance selling can alleviate this double-marginalization problem and benefit the manufacturer, the retailer, and consumers. Second, the benefit of advance selling diminishes with the product's holding cost, the retailer's stockpiling ability, and the manufacturer's commitment to spot wholesale price. Third, with wholesale-price commitment, advance selling benefits the manufacturer and consumers but hurts the retailer; the manufacturer is better off making a price commitment only when its product's holding cost is sufficiently low and worse off otherwise. Last, the retailer's stockpiling ability decreases its own profit under a dynamic contract but increases it under a commitment contract.

现代企业利用大数据技术收集消费者数据，并对消费者进行个性化定价。与此同时，消费者可以利用各种手段篡改数据来诓骗公司，以获取更优惠的价格。我们研究当消费者可以收集数据时企业应当如何收集消费者数据以及应否向消费者披露数据收集情况。研究考虑一个企业可以收集消费者数据以识别不同消费者的类型，并进行个性化定价，而消费者可以篡改数据。我们发现，当公司不向消费者披露数据收集范围时，它会收集更多消费者数据；当公司披露数据收集范围时，公司所收集的数据则会减少。消费者篡改数据可能对公司和消费者都不是一件好事。此外我们发现，公开数据收集范围可以增加公司利润、消费者盈余及社会福利。研究结果表明，公司应根据消费者操纵数据的成本和需求异质性，来调整数据收集范围和价格。公共政策应要求公司披露其数据收集范围，以增加消费者剩余及社会福利。即使没有强制披露数据的政策，企业也应该自愿披露其数据收集范围以增加利润。此外，为消费者篡改数据提供便利最终可能会损害消费者和公司的利益。