基于异质性消费者偏好下的绿色产品垂直差异化设计与定价策略

Vertical differentiation design and pricing strategy of green products based on heterogeneous consumer preference

本文研究了消费者不同意愿支付下的产品绿色度差异化设计与定价策略。同时分析了消费者绿色满意度及企业绿色技术研发成本对最优决策、绿色产品市场份额及利润的影响。研究表明,当消费者意愿支付较低时,企业利润为负,绿色产品市场无法存在。当意愿支付高于某一临界值时,企业可以生产单一种类的绿色产品。随着消费者意愿支付的持续提升,企业可以生产在绿色度方面具有垂直差异化的产品以满足消费者的差异化需求。在差异化产品中,产品绿色度越高市场份额占比越大,消费者意愿支付的提升会提高每一类产品的市场份额及利润。

Increased economic activity has been accompanied by growing concerns,such as,climate change,energy security,and the scarcity of natural resources.Sustainable production requires that producers take responsibility for the environmental,social,and economic aspects of their activities.Green products,which integrate innovative technology and environmental protection design,are receiving increasing attention.Green consumers with strong environmental awareness and social responsibility,are especially willing to buy green products.Consumers now pay more attention to the impact of products on the environment,due to the development of the green economy and the improvements in environmental awareness.Furthermore,green product production behavior of an enterprise can not only shoulder social responsibility and improve environmental image,but it can also gain the enterprise a stronger market competitiveness.By recognizing the market trends and changes in consumer behavior,enterprises are beginning to design green products to attract green consumers.In reality,consumers are heterogeneous in their willingness to pay for green products.An enterprise should consider greenness during product design to match the consumer budget.In a green production system,manufacturing the alternative product is one way to meet consumers’demands.The decision to produce differentiated products with different greenness or a single product with a high level of greenness,depends on the effect of the differentiated product on the decision that can bring more profits for the enterprise.In addition to greenness,price is also a very important factor considered by enterprises.Due to the close relationship between price and greenness of the product,a higher level of greenness accompanies a higher price since greener products are usually costlier to produce.As the two key factors,greenness and price determine profit maximization.This paper studied the product differentiation design in greenness and pricing strategy considering the heterogeneous consumers’willingness to pay.First,this study focused on a single product design problem.Second,we broadened the model to a differentiation case.In the differentiation case,we considered the optimal decision with different production costs.In each case,we tried to find the critical point of the consumer’s willingness to pay to support the development of the green market.At the same time,the impact of the consumer’s green satisfaction and the enterprise’s green technology research,and development cost on the optimal decisions,market share,and profit of green products were analyzed.Research showed the following.(1)When the consumer’s willingness to pay was relatively low,the profits obtained by the green enterprise were negative,indicating there was no market for green products.When the willingness to pay was higher than a certain threshold,enterprises produced a single type of green product.With the continuous improvement of a consumer’s willingness to pay,enterprises produced vertically differentiated products in terms of greenness in order to meet consumers’differentiated needs.In differentiated products,as the greenness of the product reached a higher level,the market share of the product became greater.Also,the increase in a consumer’s willingness to pay increased the market share and profit of each type of product.These results suggested that when enterprises planned to produce green products,they should conduct market research on the consumer’s willingness to pay,and formulate production strategies according to the actual value of the consumer’s willingness to pay.(2)The improvement of the consumer’s green satisfaction will increase the market share and profit of green products.This implied that enterprises may increase environmental awareness by strengthening the promotion of green living concepts and the publicity of green products,and guide consumers to translate green awareness into practical actions by setting up banners and establishing demonstrations.However,the increase in the cost of green technology research and development reduced the market share and profit of green products.This was because as the research and development cost of green technology increased,the production cost of green products increased significantly,accompanied by rising prices.As a result,the consumer’s utility of buying green products declined,leading to a reduction in demand,and ultimately the decrease of enterprise profit.Therefore,on the production side,the government can reduce the cost of green technology research and development through subsidies.On the demand side,enterprises and governments can also popularize the environmental value of green products through publicity and other promotional methods to improve a consumer’s willingness to pay.The main contribution of this study was obtaining the vertical differentiation design and pricing of green products considering the consumer’s heterogeneous willingness to pay.It is of practical significance to study the influence of the heterogeneous consumer’s willingness to pay on the enterprise’s production decisions.Second,this paper also explored the influence of consumer green satisfaction and the cost coefficient of green technology investment on vertical differentiation design,market share,and profit of green products.The study linked consumers with companies to analyze the impact of green consumer behavior on a firm’s green product decisions.This study tried to provide theoretical support for firms to design products with the consideration of the consumer’s willingness to pay.