差异产品市场上的声誉锦标赛

Reputation Tournaments in Differentiated Product Markets

本文应用重复博弈理论研究了产品存在水平差异(由消费者的品牌偏好刻画)时体验品寡头市场上的声誉机制。消费者只能在使用产品之后观察到产品质量的不完美信息,这使得寡头厂商之间重复进行争夺没有特殊品牌偏好的消费者的声誉锦标赛。模型表明,产品的水平差异程度越小,则锦标赛机制对厂商维持声誉的激励作用越强;另外,即使厂商之间不存在生产能力的差异,偏向上期"胜利者"的锦标赛规则也比"公平的锦标赛"规则具有更大的动态激励作用;最优的偏离程度依赖于道德风险程度及产品的水平差异程度。

In this paper we study an infinitely repeated game model in which duopoly firms produce experienced goods that are differentiated horizontally （e. g., taste or geographical differences）. After consuming the products, consumers only observe imperfect information about product quality, making this a case of imperfect public monitoring. In a class of equilibria called ＂reputation tournament,＂ the two firms engage in a contest for mobile consumers who have no particular brand loyalty, which provides incentives to maintain good reputation in addition to the standard reputation incentives through monitoring based on noisy signals. We find that when the products are less differentiated horizontally, firms are more motivated to maintain reputation. Furthermore, compared to ＂fair tournament＂, tournament biased to last period ＂winners＂ has more great dynamic incentive effect even when firms are homogenous on product efficiency, and the optimal degree of bias depends on the degree of moral hazard and horizontal differentiation of products.