产品开发中企业引入消费者参与的时机决策:一个基于消费者偏好信号传递的分析

Timing the Introduction of Consumer Participation into New Product Development:An Analysis Based on Consumer’s Preference Signaling

针对“企业可以在产品开发的不同阶段引入消费者参与”的实践观察,本文构建消费者与企业之间的不完全信息动态博弈模型来研究“在何种条件下,企业选择产品开发前端(后端)引入消费者参与,从而激励消费者真实传递其偏好信息”这一问题。研究表明:存在外生参数(消费者讨价还价能力和参与净效用表征),使得前端和后端引入消费者参与均(或二者中只有一个)能够实现消费者真实传递其偏好信息的分离均衡;前端参与时,分离均衡要求企业通过新产品价格分担(攫取)消费者的负(正)参与净效用,而后端参与不需要这种分担(攫取)机制;在前端和后端参与均能实现消费者真实传递其偏好时,前者优于后者的条件是参与净效用为正。

According to the real⁃world observation that firms can introduce consumer participation in different stages of product development,this paper assumes that a consumer has private information on his/her preferences and build two signaling game models to capture how the consumer signals his/her true preference to a firm via their participation respectively in the front⁃and the back⁃end stages of product development.With these two continuation signaling games,the research analyzes the optimal timing decision of the firm(i.e,the choice between the front⁃end or the back⁃end stage in its product development to introduce consumer participation).This modeling helps to answer the question of under what condition the firm can introduce consumer participation in the front⁃end(the back⁃end)stage to truthfully signal his/her preference and then produce the consumer’s preferred product.With the equilibriums,the results show as follows.The separating equilibrium requires the firm to share(seize)the consumer’s negative(positive)net participation utility in the front⁃end participation case,while this is not necessary in in the back⁃end participation case.There are some parameters(in terms of consumer’s bargaining power and net participation utility)such that both the front⁃end and the back⁃end participation can induce the consumer to truthfully signal his/her preference,but there also exist parameters such that only one of these two choices can induce the consumer’s truthful signaling.Under the condition that both the front⁃end and the back⁃end participation can induce the consumer’s truthful signaling,the firm chooses the former(the latter)when the net participation utility is positive(negative).