Pricing,Quality And Channel Selection In Markets With Variety-Seeking Consumers

Consumers' variety seeking behavior is one of the focuses of research in marketing research and behavioral operations management.With the development of economy,the market competition environment has been changed gradually,the enterprises change into customer-centric from product-centric,consumers usually accepted products passively due to lack of material,now they can choose what they really want to buy.The status of consumers becomes more important in business competition,bringing both new opportunities and new challenges to companies.Therefore,it is particularly important for managers to consider these factors influencing consumers' repeated purchases in their daily decision-making,otherwise,firms will incur a big loss resulted of their negligence.Variety seeking is modeled as a decrease in the willingness to pay for product purchased on the previous occasion.Under the framework of the Hotelling model,with game theory,this thesis discussed that the impact of consumer seeking variey on pricing and quality strategies and the supply channel selection in different competitive market.Further expand into the supply chain environment and discuss the influence of consumers' variety seeking behaviours on the choice of supply chain channels.The main research contents can be divided into the following four sections:First of all,in the case of symmetric duopoly competition,which the influence of the firms' brand is same in the market,discussed the impact of consumers' variety seeking behaviours on the firms' pricing and quality strategies.When firms choose price commitment strategy,firms will only adjust the quality level without changing the price in period 2,and we find that firms supply lower quality levels in period 1 and higher quality levels in period 2 with price commitment.When firms choose quality commitment strategy,firms will only adjust the price without changing the quality level in period 2,and we find that firms charge higher price in period 1 and lower price in period 2 with quality commitment.Furthermore consumers' variety seeking intensifies the competition between firms and reduces firm profits.In addition,we discuss which strategy is more sutible for firms.Furthered research 1)Different ways to model consumers' variety seeking behaviours;2)Analyzing the impact of consumers' habitual consumption behaviours on pricing and quality strategy;3)Analyzing the situation that the voucher strategy,that firms will not adjust the price and quality level in period 2.Second,in the case of asymmetric duopoly competition,which the influence of the firms' brand in the market is different,discussed the impact of consumer variety seeking behavior on the firms' pricing and quality strategies.When firms choose the price commitment strategy(or the quality commitment strategy),consumers' variety seeking will increase the difference between the firms,although both of the firms will supply higher quality levels(or charge lower price)in period 2,and consumers' variety seeking can mitigate the competition and increase the differentiation between firms.Furthered research: 1)Analyzing the impact of consumers' habitual consumption behavior on pricing and quality strategy;2)Analyzing the impact of consumers' variety seeking with different satiation for different firms on pricing and quality strategy;3)The situation that the costs of firms are different.Thirdly,through the horizontal extension of duopoly competition,considering the situation of oligopoly competition,we discussed not only the oligopoly market of symmetry but also the oligopoly market of asymmetric.However,this thesis only analyzed the situation that the impact of consumers' variety seeking on the firms' pricing and quality strategies under the price commitment,and analyzed the impact of the number of competing firms on consumer surplus.Finally,through the vertical extension of the duopoly competition,discussing the impact of consumers' variety seeking on the manufactures' channel strategy.Manufacturers can choose to sell their own products through established retailer as a decentralized channel,or through its own stores as an integrated channel.We find that consumers' variety seeking may make manufacturers more inclined to choose to sell by their own stores,and manufacturers respond more efficiently to consumers.The main innovations of this dissertation can be summarized as follows: 1)On the basis of the competition in a market with variety-seeking consumers,both the pricing and the quality level are taken into account.At the same time,the impact of firms' brand on consumers is also considered.2)We not only analyze the influence of consumers' variety seeking behaviours on the competition of the duopoly market,but also analyze their impact on the competition of the multi-oligopoly market.3)Introduce consumers' variety seeking behaviours into the channel selection problem.