To Collaborate or Not: Product Upgrading Strategy in a Competitive Duopoly Market

Author(s):  
Pengwen Hou ◽  
Hubert Pun ◽  
Bo Li
Keyword(s):  
2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (3) ◽  
pp. 1432
Author(s):  
Huifang Jiao ◽  
Xuan Wang ◽  
Chi To Ng ◽  
Lijun Ma

In this study, we develop a series of consumer-valuation-based models to investigate the pricing and return policies of the sellers in a competitive e-commerce market. Differing from the competition models in literature, a novel two-dimensional valuation structure is built, which considers the valuations of a consumer on two products and the valuation differentiation of all consumers on each product. We consider both monopoly and duopoly (competitive) markets. In each market, two models are respectively developed, one with and one without the return policies. We derive the solutions for the four models, and conduct some analytical and numerical investigations. The results show that return policy with a partial refund is always chosen by the sellers in both monopoly and duopoly markets. Return policy benefits the seller in a monopoly market, but may not benefit the sellers in a duopoly market. In the duopoly models, one seller can be considered as a monopoly seller who meets a new competitor. Our results show that the monopoly seller will reduce its price by no more than 20% when there comes a competitor, and, counter-intuitively, it will meanwhile adopt a severer return policy to the consumers.


2021 ◽  
pp. 105530
Author(s):  
Mingqing Xing ◽  
Tingting Tan ◽  
Xia Wang

2004 ◽  
Vol 06 (03) ◽  
pp. 443-459 ◽  
Author(s):  
JAN WENZELBURGER

We consider a quantity-setting duopoly market where firms lack perfect knowledge of the market demand function. They use estimated and therefore misspecified demand functions instead and determine their optimal strategies from the corresponding subjective payoff functions. The central issue of this paper is the question under which conditions a firm can learn the true demand function as well as the response behavior of its competitor from repeated estimations of historical market data. As soon as estimation errors are negligible, a firm is able to play best response in the usual game theoretic sense.


2020 ◽  
Vol 2020 ◽  
pp. 1-12
Author(s):  
Tong Wang ◽  
Hao Liang

We investigate a stochastic differential equation driven by Poisson random measure and its application in a duopoly market for a finite number of consumers with two unknown preferences. The scopes of pricing for two monopolistic vendors are illustrated when the prices of items are determined by the number of buyers in the market. The quantity of buyers is proved to obey a stochastic differential equation (SDE) driven by Poisson random measure which exists a unique solution. We derive the Hamilton-Jacobi-Bellman (HJB) about vendors’ profits and provide a verification theorem about the problem. When all consumers believe a vendor’s guidance about their preferences, the conditions that the other vendor’s profit is zero are obtained. We give an example of this problem and acquire approximate solutions about the profits of the two vendors.


2019 ◽  
Vol 14 (4) ◽  
pp. 1088-1104
Author(s):  
Hanyu Xiao

Purpose This study aims to describe the general picture of the competition in multichannel expert services in duopoly market and discuss how the quality difference may affects the competition between service providers with different quality levels, where both providers offer face-to-face channel and one of providers offers online channel additionally and service quality that consumers have heterogeneous preferences for is vertically differentiated. These results can be used to determine which service providers should offer online expert services and understand the competition in multichannel expert services in duopoly. Design/methodology/approach This paper uses the stylized vertical differentiation model to investigate the role of quality in expert services market, assuming that two services providers offer the same services with different quality levels and one of them having additional online services. Taking into account the differences of services from products and the particularity of online service, this paper extends the vertical differentiation model to expert services market. Findings The quality difference is the key factor in the competition of expert services. Service prices and the profits of providers, independent of the quality levels, are positively related to the quality difference, whereas the demand of online services is in the opposite direction regardless of which provider offers online channel. It demonstrates that provider with low-quality level should open online channel from the point of view of social welfare if it is closely related to the expert services, even though any provider can make more profits by opening online channel. Research limitations/implications This extended vertical differentiation model, taking into account the importance of vertical differentiation in expert service, ignores the horizontal differentiation. More accurate strategies for multichannel expert services providers with what level of the quality a provider should offer is needed in future work. Moreover, this paper does not consider the different waiting costs of consumers in face-to-face channel and assumes that their problem will be solved eventually. Originality/value To the best of the author’s knowledge, no study has focused on the quality difference in multichannel expert services market or discussed how to offer online expert services in the duopoly market. This study extends the vertical differentiation model to the multichannel expert service market. Therefore, it fills this research gap and extends research to expert services market in the new network environment, aiming to help understand the competition in multichannel expert services.


Energies ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 11 (11) ◽  
pp. 3024 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lucheng Hong ◽  
Angela Chao

China’s economy steps into the “new normal” phase, as it is growing in an innovation-driven instead of a factor-driven mode. In this paper, we constructed the corporate behavioral decision models in different scenarios of policy and analyzed the effect of energy policies on corporate behavior and societal welfare, in a duopoly market. The following conclusions were derived. (1) In a duopoly, the product pricing is irrelevant to the resource cost in their production process. (2) For the firm undertaking the social responsibility, the energy tax imposed by the government would increase either the production or the profit, but decrease the consumer surplus. In contrast, for the other firms, the energy tax rate is opposite to their profit. (3) Low-energy-consuming products will promote efficiency, which reduces either the price or the marginal cost, resulting in a more conspicuous cost advantage to the firm adopting the ecological innovation. (4) The marginal cost for a low-energy-consuming technology research and development steadily decreases, which turns their short-term financial disadvantages into the long-term competitive advantages. The marginal contribution of this paper was to build a simultaneously moving model, in duopoly market, and provide theoretical evidence to endogenize the firm strategy to undertake social responsibilities and to realize sustainable growth.


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