Electronic Commerce Research最新文献

Consumers often view online reviews as trustworthy sources of information in Consumer-to-Consumer (C2C) sharing economy, these online reviews create a word-of-mouth (WOM). This paper focuses on four pricing strategies: fixed pricing based on registration fee, dynamic pricing based on registration fee, fixed pricing based on transaction fee and dynamic pricing based on transaction fee, to judge the impact of WOM. Consider a C2C sharing economy market composed of consumers, suppliers, and a platform, construct a game theory model, and obtain the equilibrium solution using backward induction. We find that a moderate WOM always makes the fixed pricing strategy attract more demand. However, the dynamic pricing strategy consistently yields higher profit. Furthermore, if total demand and profit are pursued by the platform at the same time, WOM production makes the dominant strategy shift to fixed pricing strategy based on transaction fee and dynamic pricing strategy based on transaction fee.

The worldwide popularity of blind boxes is growing rapidly. A blind box contains one of a series of products, which is not revealed until after a consumer receives and opens it. This separation of the transaction and fulfillment processes creates a mystery and excitement when purchasing a blind box. Thus, online information provision plays an important role for consumers to understand blind box and generate their willingness to pay. This study investigates the link between the format of online information provision and the market price of a blind box, focusing on a comprehensive examination of the linguistic characteristics of sellers’ product descriptions. This study finds that a U-shaped relationship exists between the subjectivity, diversity, and readability of the blind box product description and its market price. This calls online sellers to use an “extreme-point” approach when crafting their product descriptions. However, the findings suggest that an inverted U-shape relationship between ambiguity and the market price. That is, online sellers should provide the necessary information but in a brief way to keep the mystery of blind box. In addition, the findings suggest that ambiguity of the product description plays the most important role in affecting the blind box price. However, when a blind box is open, ambiguity does not play a significant role, and the impact of diversity is reversed. The findings offer guidelines for online sellers to implement their optimal information provision strategy to enhance the product attractiveness and increase consumers’ willingness to pay and thus their financial performance.

Abstract

In the competitive landscape of mobile food ordering applications (MFOA) in India, the primary focus is enhancing the customer experience to mirror or even exceed their offline meal acquisition experiences. Existing research underscores the pivotal role of a superior online experience in driving business success. Against the backdrop of a dearth of studies addressing online customer experience (OCE), our current research seeks to gain insight into its state and its implications for attitudes and intentions. Specifically, we investigate the impact of OCE on the continued usage intentions (CUI) of new MFOA users. This study not only sheds light on the relationship between OCE and CUI but also presents a fresh configuration of OCE, addressing its varied conceptualization. Furthermore, drawing on data collected from over 400 first-time users of MFOA, our findings reveal that e-satisfaction and e-trust act as full mediators in influencing CUI. Finally, the study also suggests that e-trust mediates the effect of e-satisfaction on the CUI of MFOA users. Our research contributes to our understanding of OCE by specifically highlighting the experiences and outcomes of first-time users of MFOAs. Practitioners should employ strategies including personalized orientation and data gathering, location-based services, in-app messaging, push notifications and gamification techniques to increase OCE and drive CUI.

This paper aims to explore the role of blockchain in recycling when consumers have quality concerns about remanufactured products. Using the game-theoretical method, we analyze recycling and differential pricing strategies in closed-loop supply chains when a third party conducts the recycling activity. We further study the impacts of recycling channels. Our findings demonstrate that blockchain can increase the retail prices of new and remanufactured products and the profit of the third party when the blockchain usage fee is low. Otherwise, the manufacturer and the retailer will benefit from the use of blockchain. Besides, our study shows that when the blockchain usage fee is low, or the degree of quality information disclosure of remanufactured products is low, the application of blockchain can increase social welfare. Finally, we find blockchain can raise the collection rate, which is independent of the recycling channels.

The surge in online grocery shopping amid the COVID-19 pandemic has significantly altered the balance between offline and online purchases, influencing consumer attitudes toward these channels. Given the anticipated continued growth of online grocery shopping in the coming years, research on this topic becomes increasingly crucial for retailers, manufacturers, and consumers. Particularly, brand managers and retailers find themselves uncertain about the implications for their consumer segments and products, including national versus private label brands, organic products, and fair-trade products. Against this backdrop, our study delves into consumer characteristics and purchase behavior to explore the distinctions between offline-only and also-online grocery shoppers. Additionally, we examine whether consumer behavior varies across offline and online channels. Specifically, we analyze extensive household panel data encompassing 4,142,485 purchases and diverse consumer characteristics (such as demographics and attitudes) from an average of 21,428 households spanning the years 2016–2020. It is noteworthy that also-online shoppers, despite their preference for convenience, tend to be younger, reside in larger cities, and exhibit more positive attitudes toward buying local and environmental responsibilities. These consumers, characterized by lower price consciousness and higher brand preferences, display a greater inclination toward national brands online compared to offline. Furthermore, they express more favorable attitudes toward organic and fair-trade products and exhibit relatively higher purchasing of these items. Our extensive empirical analyses reveal that these cross-sectional differences are attributable, in part, to demand-driven factors and, in part, to supply-side effects. Through this research, we provide valuable insights to brand managers, retailers, and researchers, facilitating a better understanding of the evolving retail landscape, particularly within the dynamic realm of online grocery shopping.

This paper proposes a method to improve the identification effect of technical Trajectory by adding ghost edges in the patent citation network, which includes calculating patent technology similarity, constructing ghost edge candidate set, adding the ghost edges by evaluating the utility measures, and using main path analysis to identify four technical trajectories. Taking US e-commerce data technology as an example, we find the following three points. (1) Adding a small amount of ghost edges in the patent citation network helps to increase the accuracy of technical trajectory identification, but adding a large number of ghost edges may cause destructive effects on the network structure and lead to identification bias. The experience value of this case is at most 10%. (2) Different construction methods of ghost edge candidate sets will have an important impact on the result of improving the trajectory recognition. No matter which candidate set is used, there is no deviation in the primary technical trajectory identification. However, there are differences in the subsequent technical trajectory identification. (3) The addition of the ghost edges further improves the network characteristics, especially the technical trajectory differences in subsequent locations which are identified.

Given the nascent understanding of user perceptions toward digital nudges in e-commerce, our study examines key factors: perceived usefulness, ease of use, trust, and privacy risks. Via an online experiment of 273 participants, we examined the influence of digital nudging interventions – social norms, defaults, and scarcity warnings – against a control group. Employing descriptive and inferential statistics, notable trust variations were found between default and scarcity warning groups versus controls. To assess these findings, we interviewed 11 information systems and psychology experts. This research enriches our understanding of digital nudges in e-commerce and provides design insights. Theoretical implications span from providing propositions in order to enhance user involvement, conducting narrative accompanying research, analyzing diverse time points of nudging. Practical implications focus on emphasizing to users their choice autonomy and the highlighting that defaults and scarcity warnings are designed to mitigate inherent heuristics and biases for combining nudging with boosting elements.

Abstract

Food delivery platforms increase their revenue by charging the restaurants a commission fee for using their service. This study aims to understand the restaurant’s behaviour when they face competition from other restaurants while in a contract with the food delivery platform. We compare the behaviour of the restaurant when they face no competition to their behaviour when there is competition. Specifically, we analyse the impact of competition on the commission rate and the marketing level. Both the online and offline demand for the restaurant is considered to be stochastic. We find that the platform benefits when the restaurants compete. Our study suggests the platform to decide the required marketing index for the restaurant based on their unserved online demand and commission fee, and the restaurants to fix the commission rate based on their unserved offline demand and the marketing index required to meet their capacity.

The primary task of urban managers is to build a digital, green, and intelligent urban grid. Based on the current situation of China’s digital city construction, combined with the experience of Internet of Things city construction at home and abroad, this paper proposes a digital city construction mode suitable for China’s current Internet of Things and sensor technology. On this basis, the main dimensions of the economic elements of the digital city are summarized and the system model of the digital city is constructed using the co-word analysis method. Finally, the economic model of the digital city system is analyzed with a case combined with the discussion of the digital city system theory. The experimental results show that the digital city-integrated public platform has achieved the goal of giving priority to information services, supplemented by data management services in the form of Web services. Urban economic cycle development has good usability.

Inspired by the diversity of content provision and the importance of traffic revenue in media market, this paper investigates the pricing and advertising decisions for a media platform considering traffic revenue under three content provision strategies: single paid-content-without-ads strategy, single free-content-with-ads strategy, and hybrid content strategy. The optimal solutions among different content provision strategies are compared and analyzed, thereby guiding the media platform and consumers in choosing the best content provision mode, while also providing some valuable insights for the media platform in its decision-making. In presence of traffic revenue, findings show that the hybrid content provision strategy can achieve a win–win situation for the media platform and consumers, in terms of platform profit, consumer surplus, and decision-making speed, whereas the single paid or free content provision strategy cannot achieve such a situation. We also surprisingly find that the media content with higher quality fails in creating more welfare for consumers, when the traffic revenue sensitivity coefficient and the free content’s quality discount factor are high. Numerical experiments verify the theoretical results. We also study two model extensions of endogenous content quality and platforms competition, and find that the major findings of the base model are robust.