Number Of Sellers Research Articles

Optimization of the process of communication with customers when organizing sales on Internet platforms

Relevance. Currently, the field of online trading on Internet platforms is actively developing. Online resources allow customers to familiarize themselves with the assortment, read reviews based on them and personal preferences, make a choice and, in general, make purchases without leaving home. Marketplaces are becoming the main platform for online sales.The purpose of the research is to develop a model for optimizing the process of communication with customers when organizing sales on Internet platforms.Objectives: to study the theoretical aspects of the concept of "communication process in the marketplace"; to identify the key problems of the communication process between customers and the seller on the marketplace, to develop a project to optimize the business process of "Communication between customer and seller" in RTK; to form recommendations for optimizing the process of processing information from customers.Methodology. The research is aimed at implementing the tasks set and is based on a review of scientific research by national and international market participants and a statistical analysis of the functioning of online trading platforms.Results. During the analysis of the work of the communications department of RTK LLC, a method for automating the communication process between customers and the seller was proposed, namely, optimizing the process of processing customer feedback, while implementing an automated software product.Conclusions. There are a huge number of technologies that can be implemented into the work of brands engaged in sales on the marketplace, and now this is becoming the most relevant, as the number of sellers in the market increases and competition between them becomes stronger. Mastering new digital technologies will allow trading companies to radically change the business ecosystem, make it faster and more efficient in order to meet the changing needs of customers.Optimizing the process of communication with customers when organizing sales on Internet platforms will help reduce time costs and increase the efficiency of sales organizations.

Optimal Discoverability on Platforms

Choosing how easy to make it for buyers to discover new sellers is a key design decision for platforms. On one hand, enabling more discoverability generates more transactions and can be more attractive for sellers because they anticipate being discovered by new buyers. On the other hand, discoverability can make sellers more reluctant to participate because they anticipate their existing buyers will discover and purchase from other sellers. We model this fundamental trade-off and study how a platform’s optimal level of discoverability depends on various factors: the degree of substitutability between the sellers’ products; the standalone value of the platform’s tools; the size of the platform’s installed base of buyers; the nature of the platform’s fees, including its ability to charge differential fees depending on whether a transaction is with a seller’s existing buyers or not; the number of sellers; and asymmetries between sellers’ sizes. This paper was accepted by Joshua Gans, business strategy. Supplemental Material: The online appendix is available at https://doi.org/10.1287/mnsc.2023.02362 .

Minimization Fractional Prophet Inequalities for Sequential Procurement

We consider a minimization variant on the classical prophet inequality with monomial cost functions. A firm would like to procure some fixed amount of a divisible commodity from sellers that arrive sequentially. Whenever a seller arrives, the seller’s cost function is revealed, and the firm chooses how much of the commodity to buy. We first show that if one restricts the set of distributions for the coefficients to a family of natural distributions that include, for example, the uniform and truncated normal distributions, then there is a thresholding policy that is asymptotically optimal in the number of sellers. We then compare two scenarios based on whether the firm has in-house production capabilities or not. We precisely compute the optimal algorithm’s competitive ratio when in-house production capabilities exist and for a special case when they do not. We show that the main advantage of the ability to produce the commodity in house is that it shields the firm from price spikes in worst-case scenarios. Funding: This work was supported by NSF Grants [CNS-2146814, CPS-2136197, CNS-2106403, NGSDI-2105648].

Minimization Fractional Prophet Inequalities for Sequential Procurement

We consider a minimization variant on the classical prophet inequality with monomial cost functions. A firm would like to procure some fixed amount of a divisible commodity from sellers that arrive sequentially. Whenever a seller arrives, the seller’s cost function is revealed, and the firm chooses how much of the commodity to buy. We first show that if one restricts the set of distributions for the coefficients to a family of natural distributions that include, for example, the uniform and truncated normal distributions, then there is a thresholding policy that is asymptotically optimal in the number of sellers. We then compare two scenarios based on whether the firm has in-house production capabilities or not. We precisely compute the optimal algorithm’s competitive ratio when in-house production capabilities exist and for a special case when they do not. We show that the main advantage of the ability to produce the commodity in house is that it shields the firm from price spikes in worst-case scenarios. Funding: This work was supported by NSF Grants [CNS-2146814, CPS-2136197, CNS-2106403, NGSDI-2105648].

Competing auctions with non-identical objects

We study a competition model with two sellers that auction non-identical objects, unlike most of the literature on competing auctions. Each bidder has bidimensional private information, his values for the objects, and chooses the auction in which he participates (if any) after each seller has set a reserve price for her auction. We show that in some cases the duopoly reserve price is greater than the reserve price for a monopolist auctioning a single object; thus, an increase in the number of sellers may make some bidder’s types worse off. In our analysis we first characterize the unique symmetric equilibrium for the game of auction choice played by the bidders and investigate its features. Then for the game of reserve price setting played by the sellers, we show that in each symmetric equilibrium the reserve price level is determined by the interplay of two effects, a virtual value effect and a business stealing effect. The former tends to lift the equilibrium reserve price above the monopoly level, the latter may drive the equilibrium reserve price significantly below the monopoly level when the number n of bidders is small. For a large n we find that different reserve prices in the two auctions have little effect on bidders’ auction choices. As a consequence, when n is large the business stealing effect weakens with respect to the virtual value effect, and for the cases we consider the equilibrium reserve price is above the monopoly level.

Incentive-Compatible Assortment Optimization for Sponsored Products

Online marketplaces, such as Amazon, Alibaba, Google Shopping, and JD.com, allow sellers to promote their products by charging them for the right to be displayed on top of organic search results. In this paper, we study the problem of designing auctions for sponsored products and highlight some new challenges emerging from the interplay of two unique features: substitution effects and information asymmetry. The presence of substitution effects, which we capture by assuming that consumers choose sellers according to a multinomial logit model, implies that the probability a seller is chosen depends on the assortment of sellers displayed alongside. Additionally, sellers may hold private information about how their own products match consumers’ interests, which the platform can elicit to make better assortment decisions. We first show that the first-best allocation, that is, the welfare-maximizing assortment in the absence of private information, cannot be implemented truthfully in general. Thus motivated, we initiate the study of incentive-compatible assortment optimization by characterizing prior-independent and prior-dependent mechanisms and quantifying the worst-case social cost of implementing truthful assortment mechanisms. An important finding is that the worst-case social cost of implementing truthful mechanisms can be high when the number of sellers is large. Structurally, we show that optimal mechanisms may need to downward distort the efficient allocation both at the top and the bottom. This paper was accepted by Victor Martínez-de-Albéniz, operations management. Supplemental Material: The online appendix is available at https://doi.org/10.1287/mnsc.2022.4603 .

Alibaba Group Case and Antitrust Regulation of E-commerce Platforms: China’s Experience

In recent years, e-commerce platforms have been growing rapidly. It stresses necessity to introduce Russian antimonopoly legislation that takes into account the peculiarities of the digital economy. Due to the fact that China is one of the world leaders in the field of e-commerce, this paper discusses the Antimonopoly Guidelines for Platform Economy of the PRC adopted in 2021. The authors analyze the practice of the State Administration for Industry and Commerce on the example of the Alibaba Group case, and identify signs indicating the dominant position of the e-commerce platform: the financial and technological capabilities of the platform, the number of sellers and consumers registered on it, the ability of the platform to collect and analyze data about users, transactions, logistics, payments. Based on the conducted comparative legal research, authors introduced recommendations for amending Russian legislation.

Analisis Efisiensi Saluran Tataniaga Biji Pinang Kering di Kecamatan Kuala Kabupaten Nagan Raya

The purpose of this study was to determine the pattern of commerce and efficiency of the business channel of dried betel nut in Kuala District, Nagan Raya Regency. Data were collected by conducting direct interviews with farmers, small collector traders (PPK), and large collector traders (PPB). Data analysis uses Structure, Conduct, and Performance approaches. The overall market structure in the betel nut business process in Kuala District tends to lead to a monopsony market structure. Seeing that the number of sellers and buyers is not balanced, the betel nut business system in Kuala District is inefficient, because it refers to the monopsony market structure. Of the three commercial channels, the most efficient commercial channel is channel I because it has the lowest margin value and the highest farmer's share so that from the farmer's side, the share of prices received by farmers is quite large.

Marketing Channel Analysis of Oil Palm Fresh Fruit Bunches in Lubuk Barumun District, Padang Lawas Regency

The purpose of the research is to find out marketing channel analysis of oil palm fresh fruit bunches in Lubuk Barumun District, Padang Lawas Regency. The research was conducted in Lubuk Barumun District in Padang Lawas Regency, North Sumatra Province with the consideration that Padang Lawas Regency has potential in developing oil palm plantation areas. The research was carried out from January to February 2021. The sample collection of producer farmers was carried out by purposive sampling with the sample criteria being independent oil palm farmers. From the population of oil palm farmers in Padang Lawas Regency as many as 297 people, a sample of 10 percent was taken, namely 30 farmer respondents. Quantitative analysis is used to determine the Hirschman Herfindahl index on market structure, market behavior based on the price relationship between two markets at the same level and the magnitude of market performance based on marketing margin analysis, profit margin ratio, farmer's share, cost share, and profit share. The results showed that, the number of oil palm farmers is large while the number of sellers or intermediaries is only a few so that the marketing system for fresh fruit bunches of oil palm tends to be imperfect competition because there are many sellers but few buyers (oligopsony). Analysis of the Hirschman Herfindahl index, it is known that the market structure of oil palm fresh fruit bunches in Lubuk Barumun District, Padang Lawas Regency tends to lead to an imperfect competition market (oligopsony) which causes the bargaining position of oil palm fresh fruit bunches farmers to be in poor condition weak, namely as a price taker. The efficiency of an already efficient marketing channel is the one that shows the smallest value of marketing efficiency, namely in channel III (Ep < 5% efficient). Marketing channels I and II have not been efficient (Ep > 5% inefficient). Keywords: Marketing Channel, Oil Palm, Fresh Fruit Bunches .

Overconfidence in the art market: a bargaining pricing model with asymmetric disinformation

This paper develops a Nash bargaining model of price formation in the art market. Agents can be naïve, if they are overconfident and either overestimate artistic quality or underestimate their uncertainty of artistic quality, or sophisticated, if they correctly use all the available information. Overconfidence turns out to have a positive impact on both the price and the average quality of the artworks traded in the market. The impact of overconfidence on expected quality is weaker than the corresponding price increase, so sellers overcharge buyers. In addition, the buyer’s (seller’s) overconfidence has a positive (negative) impact on the likelihood of trade. If many pairs of agents may bargain simultaneously, we find that seller’s market power is negatively affected by the number of sellers and positively affected by the number of buyers. If sophisticated and naïve buyers coexist, naïve buyers exert a negative externality on the sophisticated ones, increasing the price the latter pay.

E-commerce: global trends, diagnostics, strategic guidelines

The aim of the article. The aim of the article is to study the global trends of e-commerce as a complex form of economic relations and to provide its diagnostics based on key performance indicators, as well as to substantiate the strategic guidelines for e-commerce development in Ukraine and the world. Analyses results. E-commerce has become an integral part of the economy since the birth of the Internet and the active digitalization of modern life and business processes. The COVID-19 pandemic and related quarantine restrictions have led to the active growth of e-commerce in the world, as well as the development of forms and methods of its realization. During 2019-2020, the number of sellers and buyers who enjoy benefits from online transactions has significantly increased. Business processes in e-commerce are characterized by an increased level of innovation, but also increased risk and uncertainty. The Internet access is spreading rapidly around the world, with the number of e-commerce entities increasing. In 2020, more than two billion people bought goods or services online, and global e-retail sales exceeded $ 4.28 trillion. The expected figure for 2021 is $ 4.5 trillion. More than 40% of the world's retail online sales are made through Amazon network, and its subsidiary Amazon Web Service is the world leader in online services. In terms of GMV, Amazon (USA) ranks third after China. Taobao and Tmall platforms, managed by Alibaba Group, are leaders in online commerce in Asia and the world. In addition to the main key performance indicators of digital technologies, such as bounce rate, page time and conversion rate, the following indicators were used for diagnostics: time spent per page; the share of unseen content; site pages scroll rate. Another important trend in e-commerce is the spread of mobile commerce, i.e. the use of mobile devices to search for goods and services and make online transactions. Mobile phones account for the bulk of online traffic in all industries, and in 2020, 64% of Internet traffic came from smart phones. The e-commerce effectiveness indicator is the failure rate – the share of transactions not finalized by making an order and payment, i.e. the percentage of "abandoned baskets". The average industry-wide failure rate has not changed since 2019 and was 47% in 2020. Choosing a reliable platform and e-commerce payment system is an important aspect of doing business online as it reduces bounce rates. The time spent on the page is an indicator of the site visitors' satisfaction with the available content or their interest in the information. On average, a user spends a little less than a minute (54 seconds) on each page during their visit. The “Unseen content share” is the ratio of information that is not viewed to the total amount of information on the site. In 2020, it was discovered that 45% of all content is not seen by visitors in all industries. The page scroll rate in 2020 was 56.8%. Therefore, a large number of page views is not enough, the pages should be optimized so that users do not stop at half the page and do not skip content that can be valuable. The indicator that has the biggest impact on a business final performance is the conversion rate. The average conversion rate is 1.82%. The decline in e-commerce conversions in 2020 as compared to the previous period is due to the effects of the Covid-19 crisis: decreased consumer demand, lower consumer incomes, increased uncertainty. Conclusions and directions for further research. The main trends and problems of e-commerce in the world are identified and strategic guidelines for the future are presented, including: development of mobile commerce; wider use of the Online to Offline business model; development of electronic payment systems; supporting multichannel operations; personalization in digital marketing; increasing brand awareness; providing better quality information for customers; active promotion of innovations in e-commerce. The obtained scientific results can be applied in practice to optimize the work of online stores and to reduce costs by increasing the e-commerce efficiency. Further research in this area will address the rationale for e-commerce marketing strategy.

Quality and price setting of high-tech goods

This paper investigates the link between product quality and price setting for central processing units (CPUs). Using thousands of price quotes from a popular price-comparison website, we find that market fundamentals, such as the number of sellers, median price, share of convenient prices and level of seller stability, are important factors for explaining price stickiness and price dispersion. We demonstrate that calculations of price inflation require conditioning not only on CPU quality, but also on market fundamentals to ensure that CPU attributes are priced correctly. Failing to do so can result in an understatement of CPU price deflation in the sample period.

Dynamics of the price behavior in stock markets: A statistical physics approach

We study the time evolution of stock markets using a statistical physics approach. We consider an ensemble of agents who sell or buy a good according to several factors acting on them: the majority of the neighbors, the market atmosphere, the variation of the price and some specific measure applied at a given time. Each agent is represented by a spin having a number of discrete states q or continuous states, describing the tendency of the agent for buying or selling. The market atmosphere is represented by a parameter T which plays the role of the temperature in physics: low T corresponds to a calm market, high T to a turbulent one. We show that there is a critical value of T, say Tc, where strong fluctuations between individual states lead to a disordered situation in which there is no majority: the numbers of sellers and buyers are equal, namely the market clearing. The specific measure, by the government or by an economic organization, is parameterized by H applied on the market at the time t1 and removed at the time t2. We have used Monte Carlo simulations to study the time evolution of the price as functions of those parameters. In particular we show that the price strongly fluctuates near Tc and there exists a critical value Hc above which the boosting effect remains after H is removed. Our model replicates the stylized facts in finance (time-independent price variation), volatility clustering (time-dependent dynamics) and persistent effect of a temporary shock. The second part of the paper deals with the price variation using a time-dependent mean-field theory. By supposing that the sellers and the buyers belong to two distinct communities with their characteristics different in both intra-group and inter-group interactions, we find the price oscillation with time. Results are shown and discussed.

The Effect of Perceptions of Usefulness, Perceptions of Ease, Perceptions of Usability on the Use of Mobile Banking

Information systems are important components that can support operational functions and activities in an organization or company. The existing information system has been widely used in various business fields, one of which is the banking system. Talking about banking cannot be separated from banking activities such as financial transactions. Transactions will be easier to do using mobile banking because, with mobile banking, financial transaction activities can be done quickly and easily. In today's globalization everyone has a lot of mobility, such as paying to buy using the internet and the number of sellers who sell on the internet. Therefore, it aims to explain and analyze the effect of 1) the variable perception of the usefulness of the use of mobile banking, 2) The variable of perceived ease of use of mobile banking, and 3) Perception of usability of the use of mobile banking. This study uses an explanatory research method with a quantitative approach. The object of this research is all Jakarta State University students who use mobile banking.

Information Sharing in the Online Marketplace when Sellers Incur Nonlinear Costs

We study information dissemination in an online platform where multiple sellers distribute their partially substitutable products. The platform has superior information about consumer demand and determines whether, and with how many sellers, to share the information. An important feature of our study is that the sellers have a nonlinear cost structure. We investigate the effect of and incentives for information sharing using a unified model that incorporates three types of nonlinear cost structure: constant marginal cost, increasing marginal cost, and decreasing marginal cost. We show that the cost structure alone determines the direction of the impact of information sharing on revenue and cost, while the scope of information dissemination (the number of sellers who receive information) affects only the magnitude of that impact. The online platform has incentives to voluntarily share demand information with sellers if and only if the cost structure exhibits diseconomy, linearity, or moderate economy of scale. When the economy of scale is too large, sharing information with sellers will reduce the total revenue and thus the platform's earned commission. When sellers compete in quantity, the online platform shares information with fewer sellers if their products are more similar. The platform tends to share information with more sellers if they compete in price, as long as the cost structure has a diseconomy or moderate economy of scale. The commission rate also impacts the platform's optimal scope of information sharing, depending on the cost structure. The platform's information sharing policy should be made based on the product category and the nature of seller competition. If the product category has a large economy of scale, the platform should not share information with any seller. Otherwise, the platform should share information with a subset of sellers if they compete in quantity, or with all sellers if they compete in price.

Incentive-Compatible Assortment Optimization

Online marketplaces, such as Amazon, Alibaba, or Google Shopping, allow sellers to promote their products by charging them for the right to be displayed on top of organic search results. In this paper, we study the problem of designing auctions for promoted products and highlight some new challenges emerging from the interplay of two unique features: substitution effects and information asymmetry. The presence of substitution effects, which we capture by assuming that consumers choose sellers according to a multinomial logit model, implies that the probability a seller is chosen depends on the assortment of sellers displayed alongside. Additionally, sellers may hold private information about how their own products match consumers' interests, which the platform can elicit to make better assortment decisions. We first show that the first-best allocation, i.e., the welfare-maximizing assortment in the absence of private information, cannot be implemented truthfully in general. Thus motivated, we initiate the study of incentive-compatible assortment optimization by characterizing prior-free and prior-dependent mechanisms, and quantifying the worst-case social cost of implementing truthful assortment mechanisms. An important finding is that the worst-case social cost of implementing truthful mechanisms can be high when the number of sellers is large. Structurally, we show that optimal mechanisms may need to downward distort the efficient allocation both at the top and the bottom.

Does Tax Policy Work When Consumers Have Imperfect Price Information? Theory and Evidence

We investigate how the pass-through rate of commodity taxes depends on competition in a setting where consumers have imperfect information about prices. We use a theoretical search model that has two key predictions: First, the larger the number of price sensitive consumers, the higher the pass-through rate. Second, there is a hump-shaped relationship between the average pass-through experienced by consumers and the number of sellers. We test our theoretical predictions by studying pass-through in the context of a tax decrease and increase in the German retail fuel market. We estimate pass-through of these tax changes to diesel and gasoline prices using a unique dataset containing the universe of price changes at fuel stations in Germany and France and a synthetic difference-in-differences strategy. Our empirical results are in line with our theoretical predictions. Finally, we show that our theoretical framework can encompass and reconcile a large number of empirical observations in previous studies.

Managing the Smiley Face Scale Used by Booking.com in an Ordinal Way

Contrary to the traditional economic prediction that prices decrease as more firms enter the market, this paper finds a non-monotonic relationship between the number of firms and prices in online book markets. A substantial decrease in posted prices is observed when the market moves from a monopoly to duopoly. Surprisingly, as the market further expands, posted prices converge to monopoly price rather than competitive price. This is because as the number of sellers increase on the internet, the cost for consumers to obtain accurate information as well as the cost to evaluate products and sellers increase. Thus, the existence of a large number of sellers deter consumer search and lead to more random purchases. With little consumer search, sellers’ returns to undercutting price reduce. Therefore, instead of lowering price when faced with more competitors, sellers increase prices.

Quality and Price Setting of High-Tech Goods

This paper investigates the link between product quality and price setting for central processing units (CPUs). Using thousands of price quotes from a popular price-comparison website, we find that market fundamentals, such as the number of sellers, median price, share of convenient prices and level of seller stability, are important factors for explaining price stickiness and price dispersion. We demonstrate that calculations of price inflation require conditioning not only on CPU quality, but also on market fundamentals to ensure that CPU attributes are priced correctly. Failing to do so can result in an understatement of CPU price deflation in the sample period.

Політика комунікацій в Інтернеті

The article considers the role of the Internet as one of the channels for promoting products. The article is aimed at developing practical recommendations as to the organization of communication policy on the Internet through the creation of an online store, sales via marketplaces, also with the use of cashback. Modern trends of e-business are generalized, characterizations of online trading, its advantages for buyers and sellers are provided. It is proposed to organize interaction with customers in two sectors: marketplace and online store. The main features of the marketplace and the online store (from the point of view of sellers / suppliers) are systematized: the main goal, participants, interaction with buyers, the need to create a website, functionality, creating a profile, control, product range, price regulation, advertising costs, working conditions, earnings, the ability to develop systems of repeated sales, the number of sellers. The main disadvantages in operating a marketplace and an online store (either from the point of view of sellers or from the point of view of buyers) are considered. The article generalizes the procedure for organizing a communicative policy on the Internet (through the store’s website), which envisages: creating an online store, interacting with customers through the online store sales. The procedure for organizing a communicative policy on the Internet (through the marketplace) is described, including: entering the marketplace, selling products to buyers, paying a commission for the products sold and paying a standard monthly fee for using the platform. It is recommended to form a communication policy using the cashback service and the following technology: registration in the cashback service, carrying out the purchase of products through the cashback service catalog (by links), transferring data about the purchase of an online store or marketplace, payment of cashback service commission, payment of cashback to the buyer. The main shortcomings of cashback (from the point of view of sellers and from the point of view of cashback services) are considered, which include the taxation of cashback in the amount of 19.5% for individuals and VAT, provided that both participants of the bonus program are legal entities. The main disadvantages of cashback from the position of buyers are considered.