学术前沿讲座——An Economic Analysis of Rebates Conditional on Positive Reviews

报告题目

An Economic Analysis of Rebates Conditional on Positive Reviews

报告人（单位）

陈建清教授(The University of Texas at Dallas)

主持人（单位）

郭怡婷（东南大学），张玉林(东南大学）

时间及会议ID

会议时间：2023/06/28 10:00 (GMT+08:00) 中国标准时间-北京

腾讯会议 ID：228-482-782，密码：2023

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报告内容摘要

Strategic sellers on some online selling platforms have recently been using a conditional-rebate strategy to manipulate product reviews under which only purchasing consumers who post positive reviews online are eligible to redeem the rebate. A key concern for the conditional rebate is that it can easily induce fake reviews which might be harmful to consumers and society. We develop a microbehavioral model capturing consumers' review-sharing benefit, review-posting cost, and moral cost of lying to examine the seller's optimal pricing and rebate decisions. We derive three equilibria: the no-rebate, organic-review equilibrium; the low-rebate, boosted-authentic-review equilibrium; and the high-rebate, partially-fake-review equilibrium. We find that the seller's optimal price and rebate decisions critically depend on both the review-posting and moral costs. The seller adopts the no-rebate strategy when the review-posting cost is low but the moral cost is high, the low-rebate strategy when the review-posting cost is high or when the review-posting cost is intermediate and the moral cost is high, and the high-rebate strategy when the review-posting cost is not too high and the moral cost is low. Our results suggest that it is not always profitable for strategic sellers to adopt the conditional-rebate strategy. Even if the conditional-rebate strategy is adopted, it does not always result in fake reviews. Furthermore, we find that, compared with the benchmark of no rebate, conditional rebates do not always hurt consumer surplus or social welfare. When a low (high) rebate is offered, if the review-posting cost is not too low (not very high), the conditional-rebate strategy can even lead to higher consumer surplus and social welfare. Our findings shed new light on the platform-policy debate about the fake-review phenomenon induced by conditional rebates.

报告人简介：

陈建清教授,美国德克萨斯大学达拉斯分校Naveen Jindal管理学院Ashbel Smith教授。主要从事平台商业模式、在线广告及定价、网络拍卖机制设计、在线社区和用户创造内容、信息系统经济学等领域的研究。在Information Systems Research, MIS Quarterly, Management Science, Journal of Marketing Research, Journal of Marketing, Production and Operations Management, and Journal of Management Information Systems等国际顶级期刊发表多篇学术论文。目前担任Information Systems Research副编辑, Production and Operations Management资深编辑。2019年获得Dean’s Award for Outstanding New Scholar, 2016年获得ISS Sandra A. Slaughter Early Career Award of INFORMs，2007、2012、2015年获得中国信息管理夏季研讨会最佳论文奖(China Summer Workshop on Information Management，CSWIM)，2010年获得第十五届信息系统与技术研讨会最佳论文奖(Conference on Information Systems and Technology, CIST)。