دانلود رایگان مقاله افشای اطلاعات و فرایند تصمیم گیری مشتری از تکرار مناقصه نام خود را، خود-قیمت حراج

Abstract

Information revelation has become increasingly popular among name-your-own-price (NYOP) providers as a strategy to influence buyers' behavior and facilitate the transaction success rate in industrial practice. However, the mechanism underlying how disclosed information affects a bidder's decision-making process, as well as the consequent bidding results, remains unknown. In this study, we adopted an adapted dynamic choice model to simulate the bidders' decision process, which led to our proposal of a novel mechanism to explain how specific price information affects bidders' willingness to pay, expectation on threshold price and haggling willingness. The relationship model was then tested using real transaction data from the Shanghai Steel Transaction Center, one of the biggest steel spot transaction platforms in China that employs the NYOP pricing system. Our empirical results showed that a bidder's haggling behavior can be influenced by both personal transaction experience and revealed environmental information; therefore, sellers who intend to hinder haggling behavior can choose to reveal list price information that is more consistent with their bidders' internal reference price. Interestingly, we also found that haggling behavior may not always be harmful because it can enhance the bidders' net utility under certain conditions. Analysis of the combined effects on customer behavior—when more than one kind of relevant price information is disclosed—showed that additional market condition information (i.e., market price fluctuation) has a moderating effect on how current revealed list price information influences a bidder's decision. Thus, by very slightly increasing threshold price, sellers can facilitate haggling in order to increase customer utility in a volatile market. In summary, our study investigated an approach to understand a customer's behavior under different price information environments in the NYOP context. The results indicate that platform providers can implement various information revelation strategies to facilitate dynamic adjustment in the threshold price by sellers to maximize their profits.

7. Discussion

Customer behavior has been extensively studied by NYOP scholars and practitioners, but most of the research has focused on the bidding mechanism and the final results. Here, we provide a new approach and explore the innate link between the customer decision-making process and the environmental price information revealed by NYOP providers; the data will help to guide design of various information policies that influence customer decisions in practice. Using an adapted dynamic choice model proposed and applied by Hann and Terwiesch, Fay, Spann et al., Fay, and Hinz et al. [6,8,11,14,31], we have analyzed the original motivations that hinder or facilitate a customer's haggling willingness. How distinct environmental price information affects the haggling decision, and thus the quoting outcomes, was also examined. We used variables from the customer's purchasing history to construct an efficient instrument of customer type, which will allow for better prediction of customer behavior. Using purchasing history rather than individual-specific information, such as socio-demographic backgrounds and financial status [11], as the foundation for customer classifi- cation is quite important in circumstances such as B2B purchasing, where the latter is not easy to acquire. The conclusion of how customer type can affect haggling willingness, expected LB of threshold price and WTP indirectly demonstrates the importance of customer type classification. We adopted adaptation level theory [13] and tested consistency of the current revealed information and customer internal reference information as one major factor that affects customer's haggling willingness and final bidding results. Sellers can thus adjust list price according to a customer's transaction history and encourage customers to haggle less and quickly transact at a price that can be easily accepted. We also examined the influence of market price history, which has a vital function in informing customers about the usefulness of the current price information they are given. The results show us that it is the consistency rather than the amount of information that inhibits the customers' haggling willingness and promotes a faster transaction. Market information should be appropriately revealed, so that customers can filter out credible reference price and make rational choices. In addition, the bigger proportion of high haggling willingness in fluctuant market indicates that providers applying dynamic pricing strategy can increase threshold price even slightly, ending up with transactions with more haggling and higher customer utility in a volatile market. It is worth mentioning here that this dynamic pricing strategy should be employed within a company along with proper information revelation.