题目：Limited Time Offer and Consumer Search

时间：2024年3月14日10:30-12:00

地点：明德主楼729

汇报人：宫郑（多伦多大学管理学博士；香港中文大学（深圳）助理教授）

主持人：赵玮（中国人民大学经济学院讲师）

摘要：

This paper studies a sales tactic that is commonly seen but theoretically under-explored: the limited-time offer. We argue that when consumers require time to evaluate their options, firms have an incentive to employ limited-time offers in order to influence the endogenous search order. By analyzing markets with and without competition, we demonstrate that for firms, limited-time offers are often strictly more profitable than uniform pricing for gaining search prominence, and firms with higher reservation values are more inclined to utilize limited-time offers as their optimal pricing strategy. In particular, in the equilibrium of a competitive market, the firm with the higher reservation value offers discounts within a shorter time window than its competitors, and consumers sample this firm earlier. We illustrate across various model setting shows limited-time offers serve as an effective pricing tool for firms to manipulate the search order and the impact of this mechanism on social welfare. Complementing previous findings in the literature, we discover that limited-time offers may increase total welfare by inducing a more socially efficient search order compared to uniform pricing.

个人简介：

宫郑于2022年在多伦多大学罗特曼管理学院获得管理学博士学位（经济分析和政策领域）。在此之前，他在北京大学获得天文学和经济学学士学位，并在西班牙货币与金融研究中心获得经济学硕士学位。他的研究领域包括定量营销、社交媒体、数字经济、产业组织和应用微观经济理论。他的研究发布在《Management Science》等学术期刊上，并获得了多项学术奖项，包括Sheth Foundation ISMS博士论文奖和EARIE的青年经济学家论文奖。