报告题目: Signaling Product Quality for Reward-based Crowdfunding under Competition

报告时间：2020年11月6日（周五）晚上19:00--20:30

报告地点：腾讯会议，会议 ID：959 915 136（或点击链接直接加入会议：https://meeting.tencent.com/s/7Gdp10iUNN9u）

报 告 人：薛巍立  东南大学经济管理学院 教授

报告人简介：

    薛巍立，东南大学经济管理学院教授、博导，国家自然科学基金优秀青年科学基金获得者，目前为中国系统工程学会会员，中国自动化学会经济与管理系统专业委员会会员，中国管理现代化研究会运作管理专业委员会会员等。主要从事数字经济环境下的运营与决策优化、供应链物流管理、服务运营管理等。发表SCI/SSCI论文20多篇，包括 Operations Research、Production and Operations Management、Transportation Science等国际知名期刊；主持了多项省部级项目等。

Abstract：We study a two-stage model in which a creator (she) determines whether to signal her product quality in the crowdfunding stage when facing potential imitator (he) who can decide his product quality and compete with the creator in the regular stage. If the creator signals her product quality, this could be a boon for backers by allowing them to make better informed pledging decision, and thus increases the fund raised in the crowdfunding stage. If not, the imitator will base his quality decision on their estimate of the creator's product quality, which may reduce the competitive intensity of the regular stage. We find that the imitator's quality strategy only depends on the consumer's loyalty to the crowdfunding product and production cost of a high-quality imitation product. Furthermore, we find that signaling product quality is achievable when the relative market size of regular stage is small. Specifically, when the imitator employs Homogenization Competition Strategy (HCS), the low-quality creator may be the one to resolve quality information uncertainty by reducing her reward price; while when the imitator chooses Differentiation Competition Strategy (DCS), the high-quality creator may set a even lower price than the low-quality creator to achieve separation. We also show that, under certain conditions, the high-quality creator can benefit from concealing her product quality information, and thus mislead the imitator into choosing a less competitive product; while the low-quality creator may prefer disclose her product quality information to the imitator in order to reduce the competitive intensity. Our main results remain robust under alternative model settings, including endogenous target goal, various introduction timing of the imitator's product and allowing non-pledging backers to remain in the regular stage.