网络市场渗透与企业市场影响力——来自中国制造业企业的微观证据

Online Market Penetration and Firm Market Power:Micro Evidence from Chinese Manufacturing Firms

本文将网络市场渗透作为竞争冲击,运用Hotelling模型和Salop模型的框架,以中国2001—2014年网络购物市场交易规模作为外生冲击构建估计策略,研究网络市场渗透对企业层面市场势力的影响。结果表明:2001—2014年间,网络市场渗透对中国制造业企业总体市场势力的影响存在两个阶段的特征事实。2001—2007年,网络市场渗透降低了企业总体市场势力;2008—2014年,网络市场渗透提升了企业总体市场势力。异质性分析表明:第一阶段,如果企业初始市场势力更高,则网络市场渗透会使其成本加成率下降更大。而在第二阶段,初始市场势力的差异并没有造成网络市场渗透的差异性影响,网络市场渗透对市场中过高初始市场势力的削弱作用消失。无论哪个阶段,网络市场渗透都有利于高效率企业提升市场势力,并相应削弱低效率企业市场势力。机制检验表明:第一阶段,网络市场渗透降低了固定成本和冰山成本(销售费用),改变了市场结构,降低了区域市场集中度和市场进入壁垒,从而提升了行业整合度,并最终降低了企业总体市场势力。第二阶段,网络市场渗透降低企业总体市场势力的强度逐渐减弱。同时,网络市场渗透开拓小众市场,使企业转入产品差异化竞争,利用小众市场维持定价能力,加之网络市场持续帮助行业头部企业整合各区域市场,从而催生总体市场势力的上升。

The Fourth Industrial Revolution,represented by information technology,is profoundly changing human society.The online market based on the Internet is one of the most attractive applications of information technology.In the past two decades,the rise of the online market has brought about an overarching impact on China’s economy as well as a series of theoretical and policy issues that need to be studied.With the large-scale expansion of broadband Internet in China,China’s Internet consumer market has gradually expanded and penetrated into the economic system.When compared with the market structure of developed economies,there are more frictions in the incomplete market structure of China’s economy during the transition period.Therefore,for China,the online market is not only a new market competition scenario and product sales channel,but also a new mechanism to reshape the market competition order and resource allocation(McKinsey,2015).In this context,a theoretical problem worth considering is how does online market penetration affect market power and resource allocation efficiency?The enormous and transitional economic scene in China is obvious in the impact of the online market on the economic structure.Therefore,the characteristic facts and cases against this unique economic background provide a unique perspective for understanding how the online market channels cultivate the overall market competitive environment,improve the market mechanism,and improve the allocation of resources.Currently,the development of China’s Internet economy has entered a new stage.New economic forms such as the digital economy,platform economy,sharing economy,and mobile Internet economy,which consider the online market as an important infrastructure,have emerged continuously,and continue to penetrate the economic system.For online platform operators,firms,and government departments,the general rules and characteristics of online market penetration affecting the market structure and resource allocation are of practical value.In line with the above theoretical and practical backgrounds,this paper discusses how online market penetration changes the market structure and resource allocation efficiency from the perspective of firm market power.While measuring market power with markup rate,this paper considers the penetration of online market channels as the external impact on the local market structure,discusses the impact of the external impact on market power and the efficiency of market resource allocation,explores the heterogeneity of the impact,and examines its mechanism.The results show that from 2001 to 2014,the impact of online market penetration on the overall market power of Chinese manufacturing firms has two stages.The first stage is from 2001 to 2007,online market penetration reduced the overall market power of firms;the second stage is from 2008 to 2014.The penetration of online market has improved the overall market power of firms.However,the influence of the latter does not exceed that of the former.In addition,the heterogeneity analysis shows that in the first stage,if the initial market power of the firm is higher,the online market penetration will reduce its markup rate more.This means that the dispersion of markup rate of sample firms decreases and the efficiency of resource allocation improves.For the second stage,the difference of initial market power does not cause the differential impact of online market penetration,and the weakening effect of online market penetration on the excessive initial market power disappears.In addition,no matter in which stage,the penetration of online market is conducive to high-efficiency firms to improve the markup rate,and weaken the markup rate of low-efficiency firms accordingly.In addition,in the first stage the online market penetration reduces the market power of firms with a higher proportion of state-owned capital more,and hence the state-owned economy is more impacted.While in the second stage,the market power of state-owned firms does’nt decrease more than that of private firms.The mechanism test shows that for the first stage of online market penetration,the online market does not affect the variable cost on the supply side of firms,but reduces the markup rate of firms by acting on fixed costs and iceberg costs(sales expenses).In addition,the online market penetration has changed the market structure,reduced the regional market concentration,and reduced the market entry barriers,thus improving the industry integration,adding new competitors and market competition vitality,so as to reduce the overall markup rate of firms.For the second stage of online market penetration,the mechanism of online market to reduce fixed costs and ice costs no longer exists.At the same time,there is no room for the decline in the excessive market power of former firms with high market power and state-owned firms in the first stage.Therefore,the strength of online market penetration to reduce the overall market power of firms is gradually weakened.At the same time,the penetration of the online market has opened up the niche market,so it makes firms turn to product-differentiation oriented competition,and use the niche market to maintain the pricing power,so as to increase the overall market power of firms.In addition,the online market continues to help industry leaders integrate regional markets,and can give birth to the rise of overall market power.