题　目：Search Prominence and Its Ramifications on Market Power, Competition, and Regulation

嘉　宾：朱毅 副教授 明尼苏达大学

主持人：张铄 副教授 上海交通大学安泰经济与管理学院

时　间：2023年11月15日（周三）10:00-11:30

地　点：上海交通大学 徐汇校区 安泰经济与管理学院A305

内容简介:

Consumers increasingly start their online price searches from a specific retailer. We aim to determine the impact of such a prominent retailer on channel members and consumers. A search model is developed within a distribution channel where consumers sequentially search for prices across retailers. The results show that search prominence has two effects: First, it de-escalates price competition among retailers under duopoly but intensifies competition under oligopoly; second, it worsens the channel coordination between the manufacturer and the prominent retailer. We also identify how the relative size of costly search consumer segment and search costs can moderate these effects. Compared with the situation without prominence, we find that (1) in a duopoly, all channel members' prices decrease in search costs. The manufacturer (prominent retailer) is worse (better) off, whereas the non-prominent retailer is better off if the proportion of costly search consumers is low. (2) In an oligopoly, (a) whereas the wholesale price decreases in search costs, the prominent retailer's price first increases and then decreases in search costs; (b) non-prominent retailers are always worse off; and (c) the manufacturer and the prominent retailer are worse off when the search cost is medium and the proportion of costly search consumers is high, whereas both of them are better off when both the search cost and the proportion of costly search consumers are low. (3) Although search prominence does not necessarily hurt the channel profit or social surplus, our analyses suggest it always results in a decrease in consumer surplus.

演讲人简介：

Yi Zhu is an Associate Professor of Marketing, Margaret J. Holden and Dorothy A. Werlich Endowed Professor at the University of Minnesota. He received his PhD in Business Administration from the University of Southern California (USC) in 2013. He worked as a consultant at Shanghai Investment Consulting Corporation before he went to Vancouver, where he received his M.A. in Economics from University of British Columbia. His research interests focus on the application of industrial organization models in marketing, online auctions, consumer search, advertising, media slant, sharing economy and Chinese economy. His recent works have appeared or forthcoming at Marketing Science, Management Science, Journal of Marketing Research and International Journal of Research in Marketing. Beyond academic publications, his research has been discussed in Harvard Business Review, Forbes, Fast Company, CBS, Entrepreneur, Star Tribune, Toronto Star, San Francisco Chronicle, Houston Chronicle, Global News Radio among others. 

Zhu research has won a series of best-paper awards, including the John D.C. Little Award for the best marketing paper published in Marketing Science or Management Science, the Don Morrison Long Term Impact Award for making a significant long run impact on the field of marketing, the Shankar-Spiegel Best Dissertation Proposal Award, and the finalist for the Frank M. Bass Award for the best marketing paper derived from a Ph.D. thesis published in INFORMS journals. He has been selected as a 2017 Marketing Science Institute (MSI) Young Scholars, a biennial award given to the most promising scholars in marketing who have distinguished themselves as potential leaders of the next generation of marketing academics, and the Marketing Science Institute (MSI) Scholars in 2022, a title awarded to "top scholars helping to set the research agenda for the field." In 2022, he was awarded "Carlson School Outstanding Teaching Award" for Excellence in Teaching. Zhu currently serves on the Editorial Review Board of Marketing Science and Journal of Marketing Research. 

欢迎广大师生参加!