电商超长预售下基于区块链的信息披露博弈分析

Game Analysis of Information Disclosure Based on Blockchain under the Ultra-long Advance Selling of E-commerce

在超长预售下,披露产品信息是促进预售商品销量提升的重要举措。区块链技术在保障信息的真实性方面具有一定优势,但是电商平台如何制定价格补贴、商家如何采用区块链披露信息以及商家间的竞争对披露策略的影响需要深入探讨。本文将区块链引入电商超长预售中,构建了电商平台与两竞争商家为主体的三方博弈模型,具体考虑了两商家均不使用区块链(NN)、仅优势/劣势商家使用区块链(BN,NB)与两商家均使用区块链(BB)四种情形,探究了电商平台的价格补贴策略和两竞争商家如何采用区块链的信息披露策略。研究表明:情形NN与BB构成两竞争商家的实施方案集合,具体采取何种方案,由消费者对披露信息的信任度和应用区块链的成本系数决定。同时,当两竞争商家趋于同质,两预售商家将只采用BB策略。此外,BB情形下,电商平台的价格补贴为零,且利润高于NN情形下的利润,存在搭便车的行为。本文为采取预售的商家与平台如何实施区块链进行信息披露提供了理论参考。

Advances in information and communication technology have driven the rapid development of the digital economy,leading to profound changes in the consumption field.Among them,advance selling of e-commerce has attracted much attention and developed rapidly in recent years,forming a sales model of“collecting goods,reducing costs and selling accurately”.However,it has also caused problems.For example,the ultra-long pre-sale time leads to a lack of consumer confidence.In order to cope with competition between multiple platforms and within platforms,in addition to relying on price advantages,reducing inventory has also become an inevitable choice for merchants.Merchants usually organize production after receiving orders.Since it is pre-sale production,consumers have great uncertainty about the product quality and the time of receiving goods,so their purchase intention will decrease.For a long time,e-commerce sellers and consumers are full of great pressure under advance selling.To promote the sales of pre-sale goods in the ultra-long advance selling,it is vital to disclose product information.By disclosing product information,consumers’perceived risk is reduced and their willingness to buy increases.This can not only improve the revenue of sellers and the e-commerce platform,but also promote the more standardized implementation of pre-sale activities.Compared to the traditional methods,blockchain guarantees the data after being linked,non-tampering and traceable,ensuring the authenticity of information disclosed.At present,the usage cost is one of the key factors restricting the application of blockchain by the e-commerce platform and sellers.So,to reward the seller for using blockchain,the e-commerce platform offers the subsidy price.Therefore,this paper introduces the authenticity of information disclosure guaranteed by blockchain into the ultra-long advance selling,and constructs a three-party game model dominated by one e-commerce platform and two competing sellers.Specifically,considering the four scenarios in which neither of the two sellers uses blockchain(NN),only the dominant seller uses blockchain(BN),only the inferior seller uses blockchain(NB),and both of the two sellers use blockchain(BB),the optimal information disclosure strategy of the two presale sellers and the optimal price subsidy of the e-commerce platform are investigated based on the impacts of the three factors of the pre-sale time,the level of information disclosure,and the consumer’s trust of disclosed information on the consumer’s utility by solving the single-stage Stackelberg game model.The findings of this paper are as follows:(1)The equilibrium outcomes under four scenarios are obtained,and further the impacts of blockchain use and sellers’competition on the three-party decision-making are discussed.(2)In the case of BB,the e-commerce platform has free riding behavior.That is,the unit subsidy price is zero,and its profit is higher than that of NN.(3)The cases NN and BB constitute the set of implementation schemes of two sellers.The specific scheme choice is determined by consumers’trust in disclosed information and cost coefficient of applying blockchain.When consumers’trust is low,even if cost coefficient of blockchain application is high,two sellers are willing to adopt BB scheme;when consumers’trust is at a high level,both sellers will no longer use blockchain.(4)Through numerical examples,this paper discusses the influence of other parameters on the choice of implementation schemes.The results show that when two sellers tend to be homogeneous,the e-commerce platform and two sellers only adopt BB scheme.In the era of digital economy,using game theory to study competition and cooperation helps to accelerate the high-quality development of digital economy.This paper aims to provide theoretical reference for e-commerce platforms and sellers that adopt advance selling on how to implement blockchain for information disclosure.In the subsequent research,the impact of the subsidy price on blockchain application could be further studied.For example,it is reasonable that the e-commerce platform first decides the subsidy price,and then two competing sellers decide whether to apply blockchain.Moreover,the impact of blockchain application on the pre-sale price decision-making could also be discussed.