Types Of Sellers Research Articles

Optimal Commissions and Subscriptions in Networked Markets

Problem definition: We consider a platform that charges commission rates and subscription fees to sellers and buyers for facilitating transactions but does not directly control the transaction prices, which are endogenously determined. Buyers and sellers are divided into types, and we represent the compatibility between different types using a bipartite network. Traders are heterogeneous in terms of their valuations, and different types have possibly different value distributions. Buyers may have additional value for trading with some seller types. The platform chooses commissions/subscriptions to maximize its revenues. Academic/practical relevance: Two salient features of most online platforms are that they do not dictate the transaction prices, and they use commissions/subscriptions for extracting revenues. We shed light on how these commissions/subscriptions should be set in networked markets. Methodology: Using tools from convex optimization and combinatorial optimization, we obtain tractable methods for computing the optimal commissions/subscriptions and provide insights into the platform’s revenues, buyer/seller surplus, and welfare. Results: We provide a tractable convex optimization formulation to obtain the revenue-maximizing commissions/subscriptions, and establish that, typically, different types should be charged different commissions/subscriptions depending on their network positions. We establish that the latter result holds even when the traders on each side have identical value distributions, and in this setting we provide lower and upper bounds on the platform’s revenues in terms of the supply-demand imbalance across the network. Motivated by simpler schemes used in practice, we show that the revenue loss can be unbounded when all traders on the same side are charged the same commissions/subscriptions, and bound the revenue loss in terms of the supply-demand imbalance across the network. Charging only buyers or only sellers leads to at least half of the optimal revenues, when different types on the same side can be charged differently. Managerial implications: Our results highlight the suboptimality of commonly used payment schemes and showcase the importance of accounting for the compatibility between different user types.

Strategy research of used cars in online sequential auction based on fuzzy theory

With the development of “Internet+”, online auction platforms of used cars have emerged a lot. As a typical representative of the continuous purchase environment, online sequential auction of used cars faces many uncertainties, including uncertain revenue and risk. To describe them, adopting fuzzy theory to create mean-variance model to estimate the revenue and risk is showed in this paper. Moreover, three types of sellers, aggressive, conservative and rational sellers are analyzed respectively, and strategy models are built, where the multi-criteria optimal function for the latter one is adapted Cobb-Douglas production function. Then, a genetic algorithm based on fuzzy simulation is proposed through integrating the fuzzy simulation and 0-1 genetic algorithm, which can solve the models validly. Lastly, the practical example from Guazi website shows the optimal strategies derived by models can meet sellers’ demands, especially goals of both higher revenue and lower risk for rational sellers, which proves practicability of the model and validity of algorithm.

No Data? No Problem! A Search-Based Recommendation System With Cold Starts

Recommendation systems are essential ingredients in producing matches between products and buyers. Despite their ubiquity, they face two important challenges. First, they are data-intensive, a feature that precludes sophisticated recommendations by some types of sellers, including those selling durable goods. Second, they often focus on estimating fixed evaluations of products by consumers while ignoring state-dependent behaviors identified in the Marketing literature. We propose a recommendation system based on consumer browsing behaviors, which bypasses the “cold start” problem described above, and takes into account the fact that consumers act as “moving targets,” behaving differently depending on the recommendations suggested to them along their search journey. First, we recover the consumers' search policy function via machine learning methods. Second, we include that policy into the recommendation system's dynamic problem via a Bellman equation framework. When compared with the seller's own recommendations, our system produces a profit increase of 33%. Our counterfactual analyses indicate that browsing history along with past recommendations feature strong complementary effects in value creation. Moreover, managing customer churn effectively is a big part of value creation, whereas recommending alternatives in a forward-looking way produces moderate effects.

Counterfeiters in Online Marketplaces: Stealing Your Sales or Sharing Your Costs

In recent years, criticism of online marketplaces has been incessant because of the widespread presence of counterfeit goods. This study develops an analytical framework to investigate the interactions among an online marketplace, an authentic brand seller, and a counterfeiter of the brand. Both sellers exert efforts to attract sales for the brand, and the online platform determines its effort level in combating counterfeiters. Our analysis reveals several interesting insights. First, our analysis shows that the platform’s combating effort has a non-monotonic impact on both sellers’ profits. Second, the platform’s optimal combating effort level relies on the production cost of the authentic firm. The platform finds it optimal to exert maximum possible effort to combat counterfeiters when the unit cost of the authentic product is very low, and not to combat when the unit cost is very high. Third, interestingly, the authentic seller can be better off with a higher production cost due to the strategic reaction of the platform whose revenue derives from both types of sellers. The intuition and managerial implications of these insights are discussed.

USULAN RANCANGAN TATA LETAK TEMPAT PEMBUANGAN SAMPAH (TPS) DI PASAR TRADISIONAL KOTA BATAM


 
 
 
 
 
 
 

Percepción de la calidad y confianza en el jamón ibérico. Perspectivas del consumidor y del vendedor

Objetivo: analizar las percepciones sobre la calidad de jamón ibérico a través de las apreciaciones de los consumidores y de los vendedores. Basándose en la confianza entendida como interacción entre ambos agentes de la cadena alimentaria. Metodología: se utilizó una metodología cualitativa exploratoria aplicando un cuestionario a cien consumidores y treinta vendedores de jamón. Resultados: se encontró que los actuales procesos de producción y la incorporación de tecnología al sector del jamón ibérico muestra cuatro tipos de percepciones que se clasificaron en actuales positivos, mejor en el pasado, neutrales y permanentes. Limitaciones: fueron dos, la primera es que no se hizo una clasificación del tipo de vendedor; la segunda fue que el tamaño de la muestra no permite hacer generalizaciones, por lo cual para futuras investigaciones será necesario atender estas sugerencias. Conclusiones: los cambios en la concepción de calidad se relacionan con la percepción sobre la aplicación de las normativas del sector del jamón, pero fundamentalmente dependen de las relaciones de confianza dinámicas y construidas entre consumidor y vendedor.

The Effects of Agency Selling on Reselling on Hybrid Retail Platforms

ABSTRACTNumerous online retail platforms have begun to operate in a hybrid mode, which blends the use of a traditional reselling mode (operated by the platform owner) and increasingly prevalent agency-selling mode (operated by the affiliated agency sellers) to leverage internal and external resources. Two types of sellers interact and cooperate to improve the competitiveness of the hybrid platform in the online market. Although the hybrid mode is an inevitable trend that helps alleviate the burden of product expansion for reselling, reselling may also face sales cannibalization from agency selling. We empirically explore the effects of agency selling on reselling by using panel vector autoregression. Findings show that agency selling has a positive effect on reselling. The number of agency sellers may strengthen, whereas the market concentration of agency selling will weaken such effect. Furthermore, agency- selling participation is harmful to the positive effect of agency selling on reselling but is statistically marginally significant. These findings have important theoretical implications to enrich the two-sided market and extend the interorganizational relationship and coopetition theories. Moreover, our results also offer several crucial managerial implications for platform owners.

Sequential Procurement with Contractual and Experimental Learning

We study the design of sequential procurement strategies that integrate stochastic and strategic information. We consider a buyer who repeatedly demands a certain good and is unable to commit to long-term contracts. In each time period, the buyer makes a price offer to a seller who has private, persistent information regarding his cost and quality of provision. If the offer is accepted, the seller provides the good with a stochastic quality that is not contractible. The buyer can therefore learn from the (strategic) acceptance decisions taken by the seller, and from evaluations of the (stochastic) quality delivered whenever a purchase occurs. Hence, the buyer not only faces a tradeoff between exploration and exploitation, but also needs to decide how to explore: by facilitating quality observations, or by strategically separating seller types. We characterize the Perfect Bayesian Equilibria of this sequential interaction and show that the buyer's equilibrium strategy consists of a dynamic sequence of thresholds on her belief on the seller's type. When only one seller type is more efficient than the buyer's outside option, the buyer uses one form of information: either strategic or stochastic. If both seller types are more efficient, then the buyer uses both forms of information: at early stages of the interaction, the buyer offers high prices that incentivize trade and quality experimentation, and after gathering enough information, she may advance to offering low prices that partially separate seller types. We identify the effect strategic sellers have on the buyer's optimal strategy relative to more traditional learning dynamics, and establish that, paradoxically, when sellers are strategic, the ability to observe delivered quality is not always beneficial for the buyer.

Pre-Match Investment Competition with Bounded Transfers

This paper studies pre-match investment competition with upper and lower bounds on feasible transfers to sellers in a general signaling environment, where the types of buyers and sellers are private information and the surplus may depend on both types and investments. Bounded transfers create methodological challenges - e.g., externalities in the bottom match, limits of a separate investment reward (or market utility) schedule for each side - that would be present even in a large market. To overcome such challenges, this paper proposes a notion of equilibrium that incorporates strategic behavior of a continuum of agents. Given our notion of equilibrium with bounded transfers, our model explains remarkably well why sellers and buyers in the bottom tail of the match distribution are stuck in a vicious cycle of a rat race, and how stars who stand out from the rest endogenously arise through pre-match investment competition.

Effect of Feedback on eBay Sellers’ Business Using Markov Chain

Effects of price, sold items, negative feedbacks, positive feedbacks, or no feedbacks are studied for online market engines mainly through eBay. Random walk type model is established to measure the duration that sellers with business effected negatively in order to turn it around. This study was based on data from eBay where not only prices play a role in selling items but also the impact factor that buyers depend on in general. This impact factor was studied for five different types of sellers over the same duration selling the same commodity.

The Korean food franchise industry: Diverse development and conceptual definitions of a food safety managing body

AbstractFactors in the operation of diversified food franchises in Korea have a direct impact on food safety management. The body in charge of systemic food safety management must be clearly identified and provided with a statute‐based system governing all aspects of food safety management. Several types of Korean food franchise business operations were first defined and categorized. Factors related to each food franchise operation have a direct impact on determining the managing body and its responsibility and authority. Multiple Korean statutory systems are closely related to food safety management in each category of franchise operations. These legal systems cannot clearly define a food safety managing body, especially considering the newly emerging food franchise operation types: the master franchise, concession industry, and commercial facilities. These clues provide basic data for further reinforcement of the national statutory system. In ambiguous situations, food franchises can complement food safety management using their own tactics.Practical applicationsFoodservice businesses, especially franchises, are currently rapidly developing in Korea. Depending on the development history of these food franchises and their growth strategies, complex new types of franchises with different operating strategies are appearing. New entities have been involved in the establishment or operation of diverse food franchise types, such as master franchises or concession businesses. This has led to a lack of clarity in the identification of the food safety or food origin managing body. In fact, that body may not even exist, while in other contexts, there may be overlapping bodies. This is because the Korean statutory system that directly governs food safety and indirectly governs food franchise operations has gaps as a result of the fast‐paced changes in the food franchise industry. The statutory system in Korea stipulates duties required of a specific subject (either a type of seller or a business owner). However, the statutory system for the Korean food industry does not address the diverse forms of franchise operations and various operating entities (such as master franchisors, master franchisees and their unit stores, direct franchisors and their unit franchisee stores, operators of nonfood commercial facilities, operators of concession businesses, and others). This study contends that if this description of the situation is accurate, the food safety management system can be supplemented by the strategic or hygienic controls of each food franchise or through inter‐business‐contract management with multiple operational entities. This study also makes a case for amending the national statutory framework.

Who is the king of the hill? On bargaining power in private equity buyouts

Advancing the literature on Private Equity (PE) buyout negotiations and family-business decision making, we theorize and empirically confirm that sources of bargaining power (i.e., PE expertise advantage and seller's time pressure) interact differently with perceived PE bargaining power, depending upon whether the seller is a family or a non-family business. Additionally, we demonstrate that, for family businesses with an increased family team complexity, the effect of bidder competition becomes weaker, whereas the relationship of PE expertise advantage on PE bargaining power becomes stronger. Hence, team complexity reduces a family business' decision power and increases a PE's comparative bargaining advantages. These findings contribute to several research streams: first, to that of family businesses by advancing knowledge on heterogeneity, operationalized as team complexity, that negatively affects a family business' bargaining power; second, to that on PE buyouts, with a finding that a PE firm's bargaining power differs significantly depending upon the type of seller (family vs. non-family business) due to a family business' unique socio-emotional wealth considerations; and third, to the general strategic management literature on upper echelons and top-management teams (TMT), with a finding that team complexity reduces the family business teams' behavioral integration and hence its ability to use potential bargaining advantages.

An Income Distributing Optimization Model for Cooperative Operation among Different Types of Power Sellers Considering Different Scenarios

To alleviate the shortcomings of large-scale grid connections for clean energy, which require stable thermoelectric units to provide backup services, a stable cooperative alliance among different energy types of power sellers must be established. Consequently, a reasonable method to distribute income is required, due to different contributions of each entity in the alliance. Therefore, this paper constructs a comprehensive correction algorithm for income distribution using an improved Shapely value method. We analyze the operating mode of the power seller, and establish the net income calculation model under both independent and alliance operations. We then establish an alliance operation optimization model that considers the constraints of unit output, as well as the balance between supply and demand, with the goal of maximizing income. Finally, an industrial park in a province of northern China is taken as an example to verify the model’s practicability and effectiveness. The results show that the power sales alliance can effectively promote clean energy consumption. The maximum reduction in thermal power generation and CO2 is 8510 MW and 684.515 tons, respectively. We apply the algorithm to income distribution and find that the thermal power seller’s income increased by ¥1,463,870, which enhances the stability of the alliance. Therefore, our income distributing optimization model guarantees the interests of each participant to the greatest extent, and serves as an important reference for income distribution.

Short‐Term Trading Skills of Individuals, Institutions, and Foreigners: A New Approach Based on Relative Performance

AbstractThis paper evaluates the short‐term trading skills of three types of investor: individuals, institutions, and foreigners. Based on a dataset that identifies the types of sellers and buyers for all trades, we examine (i) how stock prices move contemporaneously with trading activities between investor types, and (ii) whether, given such price movements, one type of investor has superior skills in timing purchases (sales) of stocks over another type of investor. Using tests based on daily and weekly horizons, we find evidence that individuals have poor trading skills and provide liquidity to both institutions and foreigners. When domestic institutions trade with foreigners, we find that foreigners generally show superior trading skills.

Short-term subsidies and seller type: A health products experiment in Uganda

The way in which a product is distributed can have lasting effects on demand by influencing learning, anchoring price expectations, and shaping perceptions of product value. While these issues apply broadly, they are particularly important for health products in poor countries, where short-term subsidies are common, similar products are often available through both non-profit and for-profit organizations, and expanding access is an important public health goal. We implemented a field experiment in northern Uganda in which three curative health products were distributed door-to-door either free or for sale and by either an NGO or for-profit company. For all three products, subsequent purchase rates were lower after a free distribution. While we see no difference in subsequent purchase rates based on seller type, we find that contemporaneous demand for a newly introduced product is higher when the seller identifies as a not-for-profit organization.

Impacts of sellers’ responses to online negative consumer reviews: Evidence from an agricultural product

AbstractSellers’ responses to online negative consumer reviews (NCRs) have a marked effect on consumer purchasing intentions. In this study, we divide seller's responses to NCRs into two categories: rational responses and emotional responses. Through two separate studies, we examine the impact of sellers’ responses to online NCRs on consumer purchasing intention. Results reveal that product‐related NCRs reduce consumer purchasing intentions more than service‐related NCRs and having no reaction to NCRs from the sellers decreases consumer purchasing intentions. In addition, consumer trust mediates the relationship between seller's response to online NCRs and consumer purchasing intentions. The results also show that the impact on consumer purchasing intentions can be modified by the type of NCRs and sellers’ responses. In particular, rational responses will be more effective for product‐related NCRs, and for service‐related NCRs, there does not appear to exist a significant difference between the effects of rational and emotional responses.

Optimal Commissions and Subscriptions in Networked Markets

We consider a platform that charges commission rates and subscription fees to sellers and buyers for facilitating transactions but does not directly control the transaction prices, which are determined by the traders. Buyers and sellers are divided into types, and we represent the compatibility between different types using a bipartite network. Traders are heterogeneous in terms of their valuations, and different types have possibly different value distributions. Buyers may have additional value for trading with some seller types. The platform chooses commissions-subscriptions to maximize its revenues. Two salient features of most online platforms are that they do not dictate the transaction prices, and use commissions/subscriptions for extracting revenues. We shed light on how these commissions/subscriptions should be set in networked markets. Using tools from convex optimization and combinatorics, we obtain tractable methods for computing the optimal commissions/subscriptions and provide insights on revenues and welfare. We provide a tractable convex optimization formulation to calculate the revenue-maximizing commissions/subscriptions, and establish that, typically, different types should be charged different commissions/subscriptions depending on their network positions. We establish that the latter result holds even when the traders on each side have identical value distributions, and in this setting we provide lower and upper bounds on the platform’s revenues in terms of the supply-demand imbalance across the network. Motivated by simpler schemes used in practice, we show that the revenue loss can be unbounded when all traders on the same side are charged the same commissions/subscriptions, and bound the revenue loss in terms of the supply-demand imbalance across the network. Charging only buyers or only sellers leads to at least half of the optimal revenues, when different types on the same side can be charged differently. Our results highlight the suboptimality of commonly used payment schemes, and showcase the importance of accounting for the compatibility between different user types. Under mild assumptions, we establish that a revenue-maximizing platform achieves at least 2/3 of the maximum achievable social welfare.

Selling Complementary Goods: Information and Products

This paper studies optimal mechanisms for selling complementary goods sequentially. The seller starts with private information, has limited commitment and offers in the first period a menu of information structures on the value of the second-period product. Fully revealing the seller type in the first period makes the second period a standard adverse selection problem, and fully revealing the buyer type in the first period makes the second period an information design problem. Among properties of equilibria, all types of seller must pool in every equilibrium if certain first-order stochastic dominance and independence conditions are satisfied.

INTRACITY PRICE DISPERSION: EVIDENCE FROM İSTANBUL

The existence of price dispersion is one of the most well known principles of economic theory. Earlier studies concentrated on international purchasing power parity (PPP) deviations. In recent years several studies have examined price dispersion within a nation’s borders. In this article the price dispersion among the districts of Istanbul is analyzed by utilizing a data set containing microeconomic price levels from bazaars, convenience stores, and supermarkets. According to results of the study, the prices of homogenous products, except fruit and vegetables, vary less than the prices of differentiated goods as one might expect. Results also indicate that, type of the seller of the product effects price dispersion among the counties of Istanbul. http://dx.doi.org/10.17130/ijmeb.2017433403

An Empirical Look at the 'Brokered' Market for Patents

We study five years of data on patents listed and sold in the quasi-public “brokered” market. Our data covers almost 39,000 assets, an estimated 80 percent of all patents and applications offered for sale by patent brokers between 2012 and 2016. We provide statistics on the size and composition of the brokered market, including the types of buyers and sellers who participate in the market, the types of patents listed and sold on the market, and how market conditions have changed over time. We conclude with an analysis of what our data can tell us about how to accurately value technology, the costs and benefits of patent monetization, and the brokered market’s ability to measure the impact of changes to patent law.