电商平台信息披露策略研究

Information Disclosure Strategies in the E-Commerce Platform

电商平台模式下,供应商决定产品价格将产品直接出售给消费者,并与平台企业共享收益。通常,消费者与产品供应商/平台企业在产品属性(匹配)信息上存在不对称性。本文基于博弈理论,研究电商平台(如:亚马逊、京东等)的产品信息披露策略,比较两种信息披露方式:“平台披露”与“供应商披露”。首先考虑由一个平台企业和一个供应商组成的垄断结构。研究表明,信息披露策略取决于产品属性(匹配)的相对重要性。同时,与平台披露相比,供应商更愿意披露全部产品信息。然后考虑一个平台企业和两个供应商组成的竞争结构。研究发现,与垄断结构不同,平台披露下,平台总是披露全部产品信息;而供应商披露下,信息披露策略取决于产品属性(匹配)信息的相对价值。此外,平台会偏好由供应商负责信息披露。

In the e-commerce platform mode, the supplier determines the product price, sells the product directly to consumers and shares the revenue with the platform. Usually, there exists information asymmetry in product(matching) attributes between consumers and product suppliers/platforms. In reality, a consumer is not certain about whether his private taste matches a product unless firms provide some information, and he will make an expectation about his matchness for that product if no information is provided. To resolve consumers’ fit uncertainty, a seller faces two complicated issues: how to offer product information for consumers and how much?What makes this issue more complicated is that even platforms can directly disclose product information.In this paper, the following research questions are answered pertinent to fit information disclosure strategy. First, how does a seller’s strategy of disclosing fit information differ from her strategy of providing other types of information, such as quality information or information that facilitates consumers to find their quality preferences? Second, when a seller sells her product through a third-party platforms and both of them can choose to disclose fit information, then what are the disclosing strategies for them? In more specific, who shall disclose the information? If one of them decides to disclose, then what amount of information should be disclosed optimally? Is suppler’s incentive to disclose always coordinated with the platform’s? Does upstream market competition affect supplier’s pricing and disclosing decisions?To address all above questions, a game-theoretical model is built and the product information disclosure strategy of e-commerce platforms(e.g., Amazon.com, JD.com) is examined, and two ways of information disclosure are compared: “platform disclosure” and “supplier disclosure”. First, a monopoly market with one platform and one supplier is considered. Our research shows that the optimal information disclosure strategy depends on the relative importance of product(matching) attributes. Meanwhile, the supplier is more likely to disclose all product information. Second, a duopoly market with one platform and two suppliers is considered. In contrast with the monopoly market, it is found that the platform prefers to disclose all product information. Meanwhile, under supplier disclosure, the optimal disclosure strategy depends on the relative value of product(matching) attributes.