双寡头在线零售商的退货运费险策略研究

在线零售商提供的免费退货运费险能有效解决顾客线上购物的退货风险,提升其购买意愿,但同时也提高了退货率,增加了在线零售商的运营成本,因此退货运费险受到广泛关注。文章假设双寡头在线零售商分别向同一市场的顾客销售高、低质量的产品,同时决策是否向顾客免费提供退货运费险,在4种策略组合下分别构建以零售商各自利润最大化的数学模型,得到最优零售价格、需求及利润,求出两零售商的纳什均衡策略,并对保费等关键参数进行了灵敏度分析。

Complimentary return-freight insurance serves the dark side: An innovative online return policy in China

E-commerce is a typical form of retail digitalization that introduces online uncertainty and product returns.To decrease the negative influence of online uncertainty,the largest Chinese e-commerce company,the Alibaba Group,invited an insurance company to develop return-freight insurance(RFI),a new kind of insurance,to compensate for consumers'losses in the event of online product returns.Complimentary RFl can increase consumer confidence in the retailer and attract more demand.Retailers who offer complimentary RFI demonstrate to consumers that their products and services are too good to incur excessive product returns.However,some low-quality online retailers can mimic competitors'behavior by offering complimentary RFI to consumers.This study aims to introduce an innovative online return policy based on RFI and to explore whether lowquality online retailers would use complimentary RFI as their return strategy to mislead consumers.Using signaling theory,we built a conceptual economic model that includes three exogenous pricing variables:RF,insurance premium,and compensation.These variables play different roles in the model because consumers cannot observe the insurance premium,but the compensation can be.The main finding of this study is that innovative complimentary RFI could be abused by low-type retailers when the premium and compensation are appropriate.Interestingly,compensation plays different roles for retailers with different product values:low-type retailers use complimentary RFI as a noise tool.When the product works for the consumer and the insurance profit is not too high,the compensation for the low-quality product should be larger than that for the highquality product,which is different from conventional wisdom.Although high-type online retailers may use complimentary RFl as a product quality signal,there is still a significant risk that nefarious elements will use it to create product quality noise.

Optimal Pricing and Return-Freight Insurance:Strategic Analysis of E-Sellers in the Presence of Reputation Differentiation

Motivated by the practice that e-sellers cooperate with insurance companies to offer consumers the return-freight insurance(RI),this paper aims to investigate the competing e-sellers’RI strategies.Regarding the information asymmetry in the online context,reputation system is widely applied by e-platforms.In an online market with two competing e-sellers that sell the same product but are differentiated in their reputation,this paper builds an analytical model to explore the e-sellers optimal pricing and RI strategies.Combined with sellers’reputation and their RI strategies,the equilibrium outcomes under four cases are discussed.This paper reveals the conditions that e-sellers are willing to offer RI.Specifically,the findings demonstrate that low reputation e-seller is more likely to offer RI.Moreover,when the sellers are more divergent,they are more likely to co-exist in the market.Insurance premium and RI compensation play critical roles in their decisions.RI introduction tends to increase the price,thus offsets the benefits of RI,but does not affect the total consumer surplus.

中国巨灾保险制度的框架设计及路径选择

近年来,巨灾频繁发生而且造成的损失巨大,如何通过建立完善的巨灾保险制度来防范巨灾风险,是我国保险业面临的重要课题。文章通过分析中国巨灾的损失及目前风险管理方法的局限性,借鉴发达国家和发展中国家、地区的经验,提出中国发展巨灾保险制度的框架和路径选择,具体包括立法问题,政府和市场在巨灾保险制度中的定位问题,巨灾保险的性质问题,保单的设计问题以及巨灾保险的管理和投资等问题。