Virtual Market Research Articles

The role of modern digital marketing in modeling of relationships with consumers of goods and services in virtual markets

Subject. The article considers digital marketing modeling as a tool to increase the size of business and the number of potential customers, reduce advertising costs thus increase overall sales. Objectives. The focus is on underpinning the role of modern digital marketing in customer relationship modeling in virtual markets. Methods. The study employs the systems approach, methods of theoretical generalization, comparison, data grouping, synthesis, concretization, and analysis. Results. We offered our own definition of the concept of digital marketing and established its role in the digital economy, presented a bonus card of communication with consumers in virtual markets, demonstrating the main effects that arise in a virtual environment as a result of relationships between sellers and buyers. Our designed model of managing consumer relations in the virtual market includes the main steps for a company to attract and retain customers. Conclusions. Understanding the needs of the audience, developing effective interaction strategies, data analysis, and optimization enable companies to successfully manage customer relationships and achieve high results in the digital environment.

Innovative potential of business environment development in the virtual market at the digitalization stage

Subject. The article discusses the innovation potential of business environment development. Objectives. The aim is to explore the innovative capacity of business environment development in the virtual market at the stage of digitalization. Methods. The study employs research methods, like comparative, dialectical cognition, scientific abstraction, morphological analysis, synthesis, and theoretical generalization. Results. We systematized preferential characteristics of the virtual market, which consist in large-scale opportunities for promoting marketing innovations in the market of goods and services. The paper defines the role of the virtual market, foundations of the formation of business environment, characterizes innovations of virtual markets, considers the main aspects of digitalization of virtual markets, strategies for innovative development, technologies for the development of innovative capacity of business environment in the virtual market. Conclusions. The digitalization of virtual markets changes the way of doing business, delivering products, and interacting with customers. It requires companies to be flexible, able to adapt quickly to new technologies, and remain competitive. Depending on the degree of readiness, companies need to create and implement various strategies that include transferring customers to the digital space, as well as digital transformation strategies.

On grid-serving grid tariff design in Local Energy Markets

Local Energy Markets (LEMs) are virtual market places that allow for energy sharing of prosumers in proximity to each other. In LEMs, participants’ offers and bids are coordinated by a pricing mechanism, which sets price signals for generation and loads. This impacts distribution grid utilization. Dynamic grid fees could be used by the distribution system operator to add price signals for market participants that are beneficial to the distribution grid operation. To develop such a grid-serving LEM design, we propose a framework for the design of alternative grid tariffs as a trade-off between cost-reflective and cost-recovering grid tariffs. We analyse three alternative grid tariff components in the context of LEMs: time-varying energy fees, critical peak pricing (CPP) and capacity fees for power not traded on the LEM. A case study on a synthetically generated grid region shows that while the alternative tariff components can reduce the aggregated peak load of the region by up to 31% with the CPP, the fees can also lead to increased line utilization. Also, while total local added value can be increased with all alternative grid tariffs, especially capacity-based grid tariffs are connected to a strong redistribution of grid costs from flexible to inflexible prosumers.

Anti-dumping Duties & Countervailing Provision in Digital Trade

With the technological advancement in the world, in recent years, the rapid growth of digital trade has presented new challenges for anti-dumping duties and countervailing provisions in India. Digital technologies have reshaped the global commerce which includes cross-border data flows and Intellectual Property Rights (IPR) considerations and this has posed various complexities as traditional trade regulations struggle to adequately address these complexities of digital trade. The objective of this paper is to investigate the implications of anti-dumping duties and countervailing provisions in digital trade as well as identify the if there is any need for updating the regulatory frameworks in Indian trade laws. The problem arises from the intersection of digital trade and anti-dumping measures, where the digital economy presents essential constraints to traditional methods for evaluating market inefficiencies and establishment of fair market value. Similarly, particular issues of data flow and IPR are associated with digital product and services which introduce unique challenges, such as difficulty and quantifying intangible assets and addressing virtual market manipulations. This paper will deal with such types of specific challenges posed by the digital economy in India, including identification of digital trade-related market inefficiencies and shortcoming of existing anti-dumping provisions. Through an examination of recent cases and industry examples this study will provide practical suggestions which aims to bridge the gap of regulatory framework and foster a fair and competitive digital trade environment. In summary, this research paper examines the implication of digital trade such as data flows & IPR on the anti-dumping duties and countervailing measures and whether there is a need for any update in the regulatory framework in Indian trade regulations

Improving Efficiency of Agricultural-product Distribution by Using a Virtual Market

Improving Efficiency of Agricultural-product Distribution by Using a Virtual Market

A Study on Marketing Strategies of Online Shopping Portals – A Comparative study on Flipkart and Amazon India

Online shopping is growing by leaps and bounds due to change in lifestyles. Economics of people have undergone a drastic change resulting vicissitudes in lifestyle. The present generation is following the technology trends and updating themselves to lead life. The purchasing in past were purely traditional and online shopping was not easily accepted as they were lacking trust. First online shopping portal in India was “Fabmart”, it was started in 1999. But was not much successful due to absence of logistics, online payments and various, As the time passed changes occurred in markets with new establishments like manufacturing firms, logistic firms with national and international services, online banking services, telecommunications, guidelines from government promoting online business and many more that were favorable for e-commerce activities. In recent past smartphones became integral part of human life, it is being used in daily activities like video calls, online shopping, e- banking, browsing, entertainment, education, cooking, health and fitness, travel and many more apart from calls. This transformation happened with advancement in telecommunication technologies and devices especially with Internet of Things, websites and Apps designed to support business online. These supporting activities provided scope for business to expand with cost reduction, Government initiation on implementing IT and IS for enhanced citizen services such as e-banking, e-administration, e-registrations, e-reservations, e-payments and so on. The rules and regulations are framed by government to take action against who surpasses them, in order to create trust in the minds of people to go online for faster and better services. Technological revolutions and its interventions in all sectors are being accepted and followed. All these favorable situations enabled businesses to enter into e- markets by creating convenience for customer to shop online. Some of the e-businesses are even influencing people’s life. Traditional business houses, which are financially strong. Started their own website for market expansion through internet. Small firms who couldn’t maintain websites were looking for the support of third party operated portals for selling their products via e-market. It was observed and treated as an opportunity by entrepreneurs to enter into e-market by creating the websites to sell products of others involved in traditional retailing, who couldn’t afford own websites and update them regularly. These portals run by e-tailors had increased market share by targeting all segments as a whole and within no time they had increase customer base in Multifood. Software professionals designed applications according to the requirements of virtual market operators, where these applications allowed sellers to upload product images that were handled by image interaction technologies in 3D forms. The buyer can view it from any angle just by a mouse click they can purchase it with online payment through banks/UPI supporting e-transaction with simplification of transaction process through secure methods like OTP and payment gateways where the consumers are preferring to shop online using net banking, debit cards, and credit cards. These institutions are linked in networks and are accessed through application programmed for smoother services and even other payment options are provided like EMI or Cash on Delivery service to increase sales. To have a good online shopping experience these online portals designed the user interfaces like websites accessed at desktop/laptop and Android Apps for smartphones that provide mobility. With user interfaces the customers can access all the features provided in portal like product search with filtration option that allows customer to explore according to prerequisites like interested brands, specifications, price range and many more. These online portals settled their brand image in the minds of customer by selling products that may belong to their own in-house brands and other companies with reduced prices by eliminating intermediaries and saving costs, compared to traditional markets. Sellers and customers are benefitted with e-market.

Effectiveness of the use of WhatsApp for Dissemination of Ideas of Improved Crop Production Techniques

Across India, WhatsApp groups are not only connecting farmers to their customers in the virtual market, but they’re also creating a network of resources and support for the country’s farmers who need it most. It is one of the world’s most popular communication applications in the 21st century. Therefore, a study on the effectiveness of WhatsApp for the dissemination of agricultural technologies in Paddy Crop was conducted at Krishi Vigyan Kendra, Jabalpur (M.P.), in 2022. An exhaustive WhatsApp user list was prepared from 06 villages: Khiriya Kalan and Kathoda from Panagar block, Badkhera and Dunda from Kundam Block, and Agasi and Ahrora from Sahpura block were selected randomly. Thus, 50 farmers from the three blocks of the district using WhatsApp were selected randomly and grouped to send messages about agricultural aspects. The present study highlights and examines the usefulness of WhatsApp among farmers. The social media–enabled WhatsApp is helping farmers solve farming-related problems more efficiently by making them digitally literate. It can be concluded that by using WhatsApp, farmers can seek information on farm operations and clarify their doubts about agriculture and paddy crop production technology, disease & insect pests, etc. It also saved time and money needed to solve the problems. They perceived in the study that the WhatsApp messages used were clear and satisfactory for them. KVK could have achieved immediate solutions to the farmers on a mass level through this App, and need & time-based services to the farming communities were served. On the level of daily interaction, the WhatsApp groups are successful in providing complete assistance and motivating farmers.

ОЦЕНКА ВИРТУАЛЬНЫХ РЫНКОВ И СОСТОЯНИЯ ЭЛЕКТРОННОЙ КОММЕРЦИИ В ДОНЕЦКОЙ НАРОДНОЙ РЕСПУБЛИКЕ

The article analyzes the state of e-commerce in the Donetsk People’s Republic (DPR), identifying key characteristics of online stores in various areas of their activities. The study covers the work of the Electronic Trading Platform of the Ministry of Economic Development of the DPR, which allows for a clear visualization of current trends and initiatives in this area. As part of the assessment of the virtual market, a marketing survey was conducted to study consumer commitment to online shopping, the results of which indicated certain preferences and behavior of consumers regarding online shopping, which can help entrepreneurs better understand the target audience. An expert assessment of the use of resources and capabilities of the digital business environment with an emphasis on Internet marketing tools was carried out, which revealed that the level of use of information resources remains low, which hinders the full disclosure of business potential in the virtual market. However, despite the identified shortcomings, there are significant opportunities to improve marketing strategies and increase the efficiency of enterprises in the virtual market.

АГЕНТНЕ МОДЕЛЮВАННЯ ПРИЙНЯТТЯ РІШЕНЬ НА ФІНАНСОВИХ РИНКАХ

The work deals with the topical issue of researching the behavior of financial market agents and identifying the motives of participants in unstable, extremely risky and practically unmanaged markets in the modern conditions of their functioning. This article presents the principles of creating financial models, defines the principles of decision-making in financial markets, and analyzes the impact of herd behavior on decision-making. In the work, the concept of agent modeling of decision-making in financial markets is built, mathematical and statistical models, multi-agent systems, models of decisionmaking in financial markets are considered. The available tools for the development and implementation of simulation agent models were analyzed and a simulation agent model of decision-making in the financial market was developed in the AnyLogic Professional modeling environment, with the aim of analyzing the influence of agent behavior on the dynamics of prices in the stock market. Based on a reflexive approach to the analysis of the stock market, within the framework of this work, situations of decision-making by agents regarding the purchase or sale of securities on the virtual stock market were simulated using the Ising model – modeling the impact of different levels of the herding coefficient on the stock market. In the process of modeling, the set goals and objectives were achieved, namely: determination of the principles of functioning and structure of the stock market; the influence of information value on the efficiency of the stock market was investigated; the process of emergence of bubbles on the stock market is investigated. As a result of the computer experiments carried out as part of this work, two virtual stock markets were investigated – a virtual stock market with the number of 1000 agents and the presence of intuitive agents, and a dynamic virtual market with agents under the influence of authoritative agents. So, the scientific article considers methodological approaches to the analysis of decision-making by agents in financial markets and modeling of decision-making processes by economic agents based on the agent model of group behavior, which allows to identify the presence of herd behavior in the actions of agents and to form management measures to coordinate the decision-making process.

Are markets sentiment driving the price bubbles in the virtual?

This paper investigates the existence of speculative bubbles in four crypto-market components (Bitcoin, Ethereum, CRIX index, DeFi pulse index) while date-stamping them, before using a wavelet coherence approach to look after the co-movement of each of those four digital tokens with three sentiment indices reflecting three different markets (Stock, gold, and crypto markets). Thereafter, we study the sentiment-price return connection and its concordance with periods of existing bubbles. Our results show the existence of multiple bubble regimes in the virtual market and more specifically, a huge bubble occurring during the crypto-market bull phase for Bitcoin, Ethereum, and CRIX. Moreover, we find that the bubbles that occurred during the COVID-19 pandemic concord with periods of high sentiment co-movement with the three markets. Hence, some of those bubble periods are in phases with periods of high co-movement with sentiments toward different markets. In addition, the fear and greed toward the crypto-market seem to be the leading sentiment index that highly influences the crypto-market components and their bubble appearances.

Sustentabilidad en el mercado virtual brasileño de las viviendas de madera procesada

Timber housing is a sustainable bioresource-based alternative to traditional construction with masonry and steel, and recent studies have shown that this sector in Brazil has hundreds of timber housing SMEs. This exploratory study, while analyzing this population, evaluated the profiles available on Instagram®, observing their business strategies and what they have disclosed to clients on sustainability benefits and issues. All the available corporate profiles were surveyed, and a significant sample of about 80% of a sector was compiled, from a market currently formed by over 400 companies. However, about 70% of these Brazilian companies still do not adequately explore sustainability issues in their timber housing products and service, evidencing an incipient scenario. Moreover, there is a clear opportunity to leverage the arguments posted on their Instagram® profiles as an affirmative awareness strategy. Although some justifications were suggested to convince domestic customers to consider timber housing, this virtual market has a lot of room for improvement.

NFT luxury brand marketing in the metaverse: Leveraging blockchain‐certified NFTs to drive consumer behavior

AbstractIndustry 4.0 technology enables luxury fashion brands in the virtual market to quantify the value of digital items in the metaverse; thus, brands can maintain their reputations, ensure consistent and integrated luxury brand marketing, and attract new consumers in the virtual market. Understanding consumer behavior toward buying digital assets (i.e., nonfungible tokens [NFTs]) is important. By using blockchain‐based NFTs as a way to verify the authenticity of digital assets in the virtual market, luxury brands can maintain their reputations and help consumers protect their digital assets. Thus, developing global marketing strategies supported by this technology is important for the success of luxury fashion brands in the metaverse. We conducted analyses to explore consumer behavior in the metaverse with regard to blockchain‐based luxury NFTs. The findings reveal the psychological evaluation process as a mechanism that drives consumer behavior toward NFT luxury brand fashion items in global virtual markets. The empirical findings also extend the application of game theory and prospect theory by revealing the psychological evaluation of risks associated with (not) buying luxury fashion NFTs as another mechanism driving consumer behavior in the metaverse.

Dampak Moderasi Fitur Rekomendasi Tiktokshop pada Kecepattanggapan Penjual dan Kepuasaan Pelanggan Terhadap Keputusan Pembelian Konsumen

Changes in the use of Social Media, from behavior that connects between communities to a place for meeting the needs of parties as a form of virtual market, which is mediated and moderated by Social Media Marketing such as the Tiktop Shop. Tiktop Shop has changed from an application that provides digital content to a market for its users, involving recommendation features through an algorithm so that users can find what they need. This research was conducted on Tiktop Shop customers in Pekanbaru City, involving 165 respondents. Data collected through a research questionnaire and analyzed using the Partial Least Square approach. The results showed that the responsiveness of the seller is a factor that influences consumer purchasing decisions, while customer satisfaction is not an influencing factor. Meanwhile, the recommendation factor in this study strengthens the influence of causal variables on purchasing decisions for Tiktop Shop consumers

Reinforcement Learning-Based Energy Trading and Management of Regional Interconnected Microgrids

In this paper, we present a Value-Decomposition Deep Deterministic Policy Gradients (V3DPG) based Reinforcement Learning (RL) method for energy trading and management of regional interconnected microgrids (MGs). In practice, the state of an MG is time-varying and the traded energy flows continuously, which is generally neglected in researches. To address this problem, an Actor-Critic framework is adopted. Each MG has to make energy trading decision based on local observation and has no access to any knowledge of other MGs. We bring in the idea of value-decomposition in the training process to ensure the generation of feasible cooperative policies while maintaining MGs’ privacy and autonomous decision-making ability. Furthermore, in light of the uncertainty and fluctuation of renewable energy generation and users’ demand, a recurrent neural network (RNN) with Burn-In initialization is combined with critic network to achieve implicit predictions. Meanwhile, we also take Energy Storage System (ESS) with operational constraints into consideration and deem it as a virtual market innovatively. Experiments have been carried out under real-world data to verify the merit of the proposed method, compared to existing RL-based works.

THE LEGAL STANDING OF BUSINESS ACTORS IN A DIGITAL MARKET ACCORDING TO LAW NO. 5 OF YEAR 1999 ON THE PROHIBITION OF MONOPOLISTIC AND UNHEALTHY BUSINESS COMPETITION PRACTICES

Through a Digital Market, the commercial activities of business actors are conducted virtually and can have a global reach. Commercial activities that no longer require face-to-face meetings in conducting transactional activities and that involve cashless payment methods have made it possible for business actors to transgress the jurisdictional boundaries of a state as they conduct their business activities. Digital Market becomes an inevitability as well as a legal matter in the application of Law No. 5 of Year 1999, particularly in relation to the legal standing of business actors. The consideration is that in the context of a virtual market, geographical boundaries no longer firmly limit the jurisdictional territory of a state. Therefore, the discussion regarding the characteristics of a Digital Market and the legal standing of business actors in a Digital Market becomes an urgent need. Through juridical normative research, this article intends to analyze the characteristics of a Digital Market and the legal standing of business actors in a Digital Market according to Law No. 5 of Year 1999.

VIRTUALIZATION AS AN ELEMENT OF ANTI-CRISIS MANAGEMENT IN INFORMATION EXTERNALITIES

The proposed study is focused on the theoretical analysis of anti-crisis management tools during of information externalities, namely the virtualization of the enterprise in all forms of ownership: state and private. Since in the information society any event (political, economic, cultural, social, etc.) is realized in two planes: physical and informational, the informational plane often plays the main role, since it is in the informational field where the perception of the event is formed and the reaction to it is determined in society Information externalities constantly remain a generator of permanent threats and risks of deepening economic crises not only of the enterprise, but also of any area in general. Taken into account that information externalities are realized in the information field, where the main factor is information, and a person acts as the central subject and producer of information, in anti-crisis management during information externalities, among the main steps can be distinguished: 1) HR policy; 2) virtualization; 3) branding. Internet technologies that allow us to get the latest information on a crisis phenomenon are often used in crisis communications planning to provide employees, managers, and external stakeholders with the necessary information. After processing and analysing information, techniques and methods of anti-crisis management are developed, namely training and education of professional personnel to overcome and prevent crisis situations and to implement anti-crisis measures in the future. In the information society, a necessary condition for the effective operation of the enterprise is the virtualization of the enterprise, which can timely ensure the effective withdrawal of the enterprise from a. Virtualization of the enterprise involves the creation of a virtual market, virtual reality and virtual organization of the enterprise with the help of information and communication technologies. Functions performed by virtualization include: communication (email, video conferencing, collaboration software, social media), data management (data storage, data management, data access), marketing (content creation, online advertising, e-commerce, marketing research), process improvement (financial savings, reduction of logistics costs), resource planning (combination of functional aspects of the enterprise).

Joint pricing and inventory management in a competitive market using reinforcement learning: a combination of the agent-based and simulation-optimization approaches

ABSTRACT One of the most important tools is an appropriate pricing mechanism to attract more customers and increase profits. The retailers’ main question is how to set the prices and inventory policies to maximize profit in a competitive heterogeneous market in presence of non-zero lead time and lost sales. A reinforcement learning algorithm is proposed to create appropriate decision-making mechanisms for pricing. A coordinated inventory policy in a competitive environment reduces logistic costs and leads to a higher profit. We use a reinforcement learning algorithm to investigate the performance of a retailer in a competitive environment. An agent-based modeling experimental environment combined with a simulation-optimization method in which a virtual market has been reproduced is used. The market is not homogeneous with respect to customer behavior. It is assumed that the retailer uses (R, Q) policy where the lead time is a fixed amount (L), and the shortage is permissible. The quality, distance, service level, and price are factors that influence customers’ choices. The simulation results for some randomly generated examples show that the algorithm in the competitive environment can make more profit than other available methods and the combined utilization of simulation-optimization methods has been able to find better solutions for the hybrid model of pricing and inventory management considering customer behavior. The results of simulation for three different categories of customers (more sensitive to price, equally sensitive to price, quality and service level, and more sensitive to quality (indicate that the average profit for the proposed algorithm is higher than that of other examined algorithms.

Examining the relationships between Entrepreneurship, Intrapreneurship, and e-Commerce. Evidence from Iberian and Scandinavian Countries

Digitisation is a phenomenon that inevitably affects companies and economies. Consequently, the virtual market seems an excellent alternative for aspiring entrepreneurs. Recent statistics precisely point to accelerated growth of e-commerce. Indeed, this and entrepreneurship are business tools that allow a new dynamic in the market. However, recent research has barely explored the relationship between entrepreneurship and e-commerce, so this study contributes to the literature by filling the gap.
 In light of the above, this study has used several indicators from two groups of countries, namely Scandinavia, in broad terms (Denmark, Sweden, Norway and Finland), and Iberia (Portugal and Spain) from the years 2012 to 2020. The Panel Corrected Standard Errors models have been used for the econometric treatment of the data. The findings confirm the bidirectional causality between entrepreneurship and e-commerce. In addition, from a widerperspective of entrepreneurship, the paper also reveals that intrapreneurship based on Research and Development (R&D) is an e-commerce driver. Therefore, this study opens up a new discussion and provides relevant support for the theoretical framework and a valuable contribution to the scarce literature on the relationship between entrepreneurship and e-commerce.

A multi-agent virtual market model for generalization in reinforcement learning based trading strategies

Many studies have successfully used reinforcement learning (RL) to train an intelligent agent that learns profitable trading strategies from financial market data. Most of RL trading studies have simplified the effect of the actions of the trading agent on the market state. The trading agent is trained to maximize long-term profit by optimizing fixed historical data. However, such approach frequently results in the trading performance during out-of-sample validation being considerably different from that during training. In this paper, we propose a multi-agent virtual market model (MVMM) comprised of multiple generative adversarial networks (GANs) which cooperate with each other to reproduce market price changes. In addition, the action of the trading agent can be superimposed on the current state as the input of the MVMM to generate an action-dependent next state. In this research, real historical data were replaced with the simulated market data generated by the MVMM. The experimental results indicated that the trading strategy of the trained RL agent achieved a 12% higher profit and exhibited low risk of loss in the 2019 China Shanghai Shenzhen 300 stock index futures backtest.

ВІРТУАЛЬНИЙ МАРКЕТИНГ В КОМУНІКАЦІЯХ

This article presents the results of a study on the use of the latest virtual marketing tools in communications. Virtual marketing and virtual markets are currently evolving, adapting rapidly to continuous technological change. The problem is topical and very interesting for economic science. The main body of the article reveals the characteristics of the application of new virtual marketing tools in communications. The advantages of modern virtual marketing are highlighted. They manifest themselves in the fact that virtual organisations take an active part. For them, the boundaries between its participants, resources and offices are open due to intensive information links. In order to avoid incorrect reading of the article's content, modern interpretations in understanding of the article's material have been clarified and modern content of the concepts used in the article, have been disclosed in the author's presentation. The essence and content of virtual marketing is considered. Several interpretations of the essence of this concept are applied: in the narrow sense, in the broad sense, the former definitions of marketing. The advantages of using virtual marketing in comparison with marketing based on traditional technologies are determined. The main goals and objectives, strategies of virtual marketing in virtual markets in communications are formulated. Scientific novelty and originality of the material of the article lies in the fact that it is revealed in a new way virtually unexplored aspects of marketers' use of virtual marketing tools. With practical implementation of the proposals presented in the article, it is possible to achieve harmony of interests between marketers of virtual products and all other participants in the system of modern virtual markets in communications. Further research may focus on detailed elaboration of the developed proposals and recommendations for their practical application. The use of the scientific materials presented in the article may allow other scientists to study various aspects of marketing activities on virtual markets in communications.