基于社交网络外部性的产品定价策略

Product Pricing Strategies Based on Social Network Externalities

互联网的飞速发展使得消费者之间的信息传播更加快速且广泛,移动社交网络逐渐成为学者们关注的研究热点。社交网络中关于产品信息的内容可以分为用户生成内容(User-generated-content,UGC)和营销生成内容(Marketing-generated-content,MGC),消费者的购买决策会受到网络中这两大内容的影响。利用具有网络外部性的消费者效用函数,分析企业在两个不同的销售阶段,基于消费者在网络中的位置进行产品定价从而实现企业整体利润最大化的问题。研究发现:消费者之间的影响力是有差异的,并且这种差异对零售商是有利的,企业应该采取递增的动态定价策略,即在第二个销售阶段时,企业应该对商品进行涨价。研究结果对垄断电商制定相应的营销和定价策略,有一定的借鉴作用。

The rapid development of the Internet has made the information between consumers spreading faster and more extensive,and the social networks have gradually become a research hotspot that scholars pay attention to.The content of product information in social networks can be divided into user-generated content(UGC)and marketing-generated content(MGC).Consumers purchasing decisions will be affected by these two kinds of contents.Using the consumer utility function with network externalities,the paper analyzes the problem of enterprise pricing strategy based on the position of consumers in the networks in two different sales stages to maximize the overall profit.The study finds that there are differences between the influence of consumers,and the difference is beneficial to retailers.Enterprises should adopt an incremental dynamic pricing strategy,that is,in the second sales stage,enterprises should increase their price.The results could be a reference for monopolistic e-commerce retailers to formulate corresponding marketing and pricing strategies.