2021 Fiscal Year Research-status Report
Social Learning, Consumer Search and Firms' Dynamic Strategies: A Theoretical Approach
| Project/Area Number |
21K13300
|
|---|
| Research Institution | Kyoto Sangyo University |
|---|
Principal Investigator |
潘 聡 京都産業大学, 経済学部, 助教 (30807425)
|
|---|
| Project Period (FY) |
2021-04-01 – 2024-03-31
|
| Keywords | Social Influencers / Consumer Search / Projection-bias / Online Store |
|---|
| Outline of Annual Research Achievements |
In 2021, I started two related subprojects incorporating social learning into the search model. In one subproject, I find that with social influencers and consumers' social learning, an incumbent firm may intentionally choose to ask a platform to display itself after the entrants. In my second subproject, I consider how consumers' projection-bias behaviors affect their searching decision-making. I find that if a consumer overestimates his/her future benefit, that consumer may engage in more useless searches, meaning a welfare loss.
Besides, I finished two papers regarding how firms' online stores affect consumers' purchasing behaviors and the competition outcomes. In the first paper, I find that when an upstream manufacturer with its online store and its downstream retailer engage in sales promotion investment, consumers' higher willingness to pay or lower dislike towards the online store may reduce both the manufacturer and the retailer's profits. In the second paper, I find that when consumers can purchase products from a traditional retailer or an upstream manufacturer's online store, the traditional retailer may intentionally disclose its core technology to trigger entry to fight against the manufacturer's online store. I published these two papers in the SSRN discussion paper series.
I presented my findings from the above projects at international conferences (virtual).
|
| Current Status of Research Progress |
Current Status of Research Progress
2: Research has progressed on the whole more than it was originally planned.
Reason
My project is progressing smoothly. In my first subproject, as planned in my research proposal, I successfully incorporated social learning into the search model. I confirmed my initial guess that social influencers and consumers’ social learning behavior would significantly alter their searching behavior and firms’ decision-making. In my second subproject, I further enriched the existing search model using behavioral economics. I found that a higher search cost may help prevent the useless search and alleviate the welfare loss, which is in contrast with many existing well-known results. Besides, the results gained from the two finished papers act as a good complementary to my two unfinished subprojects.
|
| Strategy for Future Research Activity |
My year 2022’s research will follow my research proposal. I will first check the robustness of my first year’s results. Since both subprojects use the assumption that consumers’ matching values follow from a uniform distribution, it is important to confirm whether my results hold under other types of distributions. Besides, in my first subproject, I currently assume the social influencers are those who purchased the firms’ products. In next year’s research, I will incorporate firms’ decision-making on whether to create fake reviews and see how this activity affects their incentive to become prominent (to be displayed at the top of the search results). I will finish two papers and will submit them to academic conferences, SSRN discussion paper series, and academic journals.
|
| Causes of Carryover |
I planned to buy Microsoft Surface Book 3 (detachable type) in the year 2021, but a new model with better calculation capability will be released in the year 2022, so I postponed my purchase.
|
