This paper studies the optimal pricing strategy of a hotel that establishes an online distribution channel through cooperation with an online travel agency (OTA). The OTA promotes the hotel and sells ...hotel rooms through its website and receives commission from the hotel for rooms sold. Through a sequence game model, this paper derives the optimal decision on the unit commission of the hotel and the optimal response of the OTA to that commission. The paper notes management implications, including (1) occupancy rate of a hotel before opening online marketing is an important metric for securing cooperation with an OTA; that is, a hotel with lower occupancy rates is more inclined to cooperate with an OTA to achieve an improvement in profits; and (2) a hotel is inclined to establish an online channel through an OTA with many online customers and/or few listed hotels.
•Study the pricing game with OTAs when hotels open online marketing channel.•Propose a game model to describe the channel competition between hotels and OTAs.•Find the optimal pricing policy for hotels to maximize the profit.•Give suggestions for hotels how to choose appropriate online partners.
Peer to Peer e-commerce is increasingly characterized by trends towards the personalization of buyers and sellers in the on-line marketplace. This personalization includes buyer reviews, personal ...pictures and profiles, and other biographical information intended to reduce buyers’ perceived “purchase risk” or to facilitate trust in the sellers. However, this phenomenon is transforming what started as an essentially “anonymous” market to one susceptible to traditional market failures, including potential racial discrimination, in a manner similar to its brick and mortar counterparts. In this paper, we examine the effect of on-line host information (race, gender, sexual orientation, etc.) on the price of available rental listings in San Francisco on Airbnb.com. We find that on average, Asian and Hispanic hosts charge 8%-10% lower prices relative to their White counterparts on equivalent rental properties, after controlling for all renter-available information on rental unit characteristics, as well as additional information on neighborhood property values, area demographics, and occupancy rates. We do not find any differences in occupancy rates between minority and White hosts. This may suggest that minorities price lower because they are forward-looking, perhaps due to an expectation of discrimination in the online marketplace or have a preference to increase demand to either maintain their target occupancy level or to attract a larger pool of potential renters to choose from. Overall, our findings are consistent with but not conclusive of a market test of potential racial discrimination affecting Hispanic Airbnb hosts, manifested in an anticipation of disparate market demand for their rentals, and responded to by lower listing prices.
PurposeThe paper aims to clarify the effects of brand differentiation on the platform's formulation of channel strategy and help the online platform formulate the optimal channel strategy, which ...involves selecting a proper selling mode for each brand.Design/methodology/approachThe paper develops a multistage game model consisting of one online platform and two competing manufacturers with differentiated brands and examines the effects of brand differentiation on these three channel members' profits under each candidate channel strategy.FindingsThe results show that the platform prefers to offer the reselling mode for both brands when the brand differentiation is low, and this preference will be enhanced by the decrease in order fulfilment cost. By contrast, when the brand differentiation is high, it will offer the reselling mode for the premium brand but the marketplace service for the economy brand if the order fulfilment cost is not high; or the marketplace mode will be offered to both brands if this cost is high.Research limitations/implicationsThis study assumes that the order fulfilment costs of platform and manufacturer are fixed and symmetric. Therefore, researchers are encouraged to consider asymmetric costs of order fulfilment.Practical implicationsThe paper guides the online platform to formulate the optimal channel strategy for differentiated brands and provides managerial insights for differentiated brands entering online markets.Originality/valueThis paper explores platforms' optimal channel strategy by jointly considering the effects of brand differentiation and investigates the impacts of brand differentiation on the optimal decision making under four candidate options. Moreover, this paper has been extended to examine the case when the manufacturers' production costs cannot be neglected.
•We study the interaction between a supplier’s strategy for introducing a marketplace channel and an e-tailer’s selection of the selling mode.•The e-tailer’s selling mode choice is influenced by not ...only the performance of both the supplier and the marketplace but also the channel competition.•Selling through the marketplace channel may not always benefit the supplier or the e-tailer.•The supplier may eschew the marketplace channel and induce the e-tailer to sell through it when the marketplace service level is relatively high.
The increasing prevalence of online marketplaces has induced many suppliers to sell directly on them, which causes potential threats to small- and medium-sized e-tailers. Considering e-tailers’ broader question of how best to counteract these marketplaces, we consider three of online sales modes, namely, the traditional, consignment, and in-marketplace selling modes. In particular, we investigate the interaction between a supplier’s strategy for introducing a marketplace channel and an e-tailer’s choice of selling mode. Our analysis reveals that the e-tailer’s selling mode choice depends not only on the performance of both the supplier and the marketplace but also channel competition. In general, the e-tailer prefers the in-marketplace selling mode with a higher marketplace service level and the consignment mode with higher supplier selling efficiency. If a marketplace channel exists, traditional reselling is a better choice when both the marketplace service level and the supplier selling efficiency are restricted to the middle range. The underlying mechanism is that traditional reselling is less negatively affected by the competition effect. Finally, we find that the supplier wants to eschew the marketplace channel and strategically induce the e-tailer to sell through it even though the marketplace service level is relatively high. This research provides guidance not only for the supplier’s channel choice but also for the small- and medium-sized e-tailers’ choice of selling mode when encountering the online marketplace.
•Investigates how online marketplace users utilize market signals and whether this differs for high or low involvement goods.•Study 1 analyzes interviews to understand how users conceptualize market ...signals for different types of purchases.•Study 2 uses an eye-tracking experiment to test hypotheses derived from signaling theory.•The findings reveal that costly market signals establish seller credibility for high involvement goods.•Provides practical implications for online marketplaces on how to present quality cues and reduce information asymmetry.•Extending signaling theory, the paper explains how product involvement affects the processing of market signals.
To understand how users of online marketplaces process market signals in their decision making and whether this depends on if the good is of high or low involvement.
The paper employs a mixed methods approach. Study 1 draws on an analysis of interviews with online marketplace users using hypothetical eBay purchases as stimuli, understanding how users conceptualize specific market signals and whether their importance varies depending on the type of purchase (high versus low involvement good). Study 2 tests hypotheses derived from signaling theory, using an eye tracking experiment.
Price and photographs act as “fast and frugal” signals for inclusion in consideration sets for low involvement purchases, but consumers deem them insufficient for high involvement purchases where high-cost signals that help establish seller credibility are far more salient. Users pay relatively greater attention to costly market signals, which are beyond sellers’ direct control, for high involvement goods.
The paper offers insights for sellers regarding the presentation of quality cues and strategies online marketplaces can employ to reduce information asymmetry.
Drawing on and extending signaling theory, the paper introduces and confirms hypotheses for understanding users’ attention to market signals when making purchase decisions on online marketplaces. It identifies how the degree of involvement of a product affects the processing of market signals.
In this research, we use sentiment analysis to refine the user interface (UI) and user experience (UX) of the Bukalapak application, a leading online trading platform in Indonesia. We focus our ...scrutiny on 4,462 reviews related to the UI within a larger dataset of 246,947. Almost a third of these critiques express dissatisfaction, predominantly pointing out issues related to the UI design and its functionality. The critiques underscore the potential of sentiment analysis as a tool to uncover areas of user-centric design that need improvement. To address these issues, it is necessary to incorporate user feedback and sentiment analysis into the design workflow, allowing a more in-depth understanding of user needs and facilitating more effective service enhancements. Embracing a user-centered methodology allows for UI fine-tuning, leading to better functionality and increased user contentment. Our investigation reveals a positive link between design refinements and usability ratings, indicating improved user experience satisfaction. To summarize, this research highlights the essential contribution of user feedback and sentiment analysis to detect and correct UI shortfalls, thus augmenting UX and contributing to the triumph of platforms like Bukalapak within Indonesia's dynamically changing e-commerce environment.
Purpose: The significance of customer service in determining customer happiness has become one of the key indicators for online marketplaces in Indonesia, which experienced phenomenal growth during ...the Covid-19 pandemic. This study aims to determine how employee well-being affects customer service personnel performance along with the mediating effect of employee voice behavior.
Design/Methodology/Approach: The analysis was examined using the structural equation modelling (SEM) approach in customer service within various online marketplaces in Indonesia.
Findings: This study finds that psychological well-being has a positive and significant effect on job performance. In terms of mediation effects, promotive voice and prohibitive voice behavior were found to significantly mediate employee well-being on job performance, except promotive voice on psychological well-being.
Research, Practical & Social implications: Employee performance in this study was measured as perceived by customer service and gathered through cross-sectional research.
Originality/Value: This study extends the knowledge about the link between employee well-being and employee voice performance as well as the mediation generated in terms of promotive and prohibitive voice behavior.
Motivated by the industrial practice that the giant E-commerce platforms are well motivated to engage in offering the extended warranty service, this paper investigates the optimal extended warranty ...provision with a platform supply chain. Depending on who acts as the extended warranty underwriter with the two online channel modes (i.e., the online agency mode or the online reselling mode), several different extended warranty scenarios are hence formulated, based on which we apply Stackelberg game to address the equilibria. With the analytical studies, our results show several important and interesting insights. For example, but not limited to, it is found that: (a) the dynamics of the optimal extended warranty strategy is largely different in response to various combinations of the warranty underwriters and the online channel modes; (b) the agent, who takes the ownership over the product (i.e., the manufacturer with the online agency mode and the platform with the online reselling mode), acts more responsively in providing the extended warranty service across the two online channel modes; (c) offering the pricing discount is an important intermediary that affects the Pareto improvement zone benefiting the two individuals in this platform supply chain; (d) the specific extended warranty strategies that the warranty underwriter adopts across two online channel modes induce a significant implication for selecting the optimal online channel modes for both warranty underwriters. These results derived in our paper shed lights for the platform supply chain practice on who and when to offer the extended warranty service.
•Explore optimal EW service provision with an E-commerce platform supply chain.•Reveal dynamics of the optimal EW strategy in response to various channel modes and warranty underwriters.•Examine who is better off by offing the extended warranty with two different online channel modes.•Examine the best online channel mode for different warranty underwriters.
This research wanted to show the development of e-commerce transaction brought something new to organizations to accelerate their business through online sales. The presence of online marketplace ...also gave positive impacts for organizations to run online sales. It was undeniable that e-commerce positively contributes to people’s lives, besides the negative side that most people are still reluctant to use it. Online-to-offline (O2O) was a strategy to direct online users to do offline activities in physical stores. With O2O, customers could buy products from the store after researching online, paying online, and picking up product from the store. The research aimed to find out more about factors that influence consumer trust level to do a transaction in online media, as well as to measure the effectiveness of O2O strategy on e-commerce. Furthermore, this research used a quantitative correlation data analysis method on critical factors that influence customer decision in doing ecommerce transaction, with non-experimental research. The research outcome is the overview of the effectiveness feature and O2O strategy that is provided by the online shopping provider in giving a positive influence for consumers to make purchases in e-commerce. This research also reflects how the people respond to the existence of a marketplace that complements its place with O2O service.
TeachersPayTeachers.com (TpT) is an influential online education resource marketplace where users download, buy, and sell education content. How and why educators use platforms like TpT has received ...only limited scholarly attention. This research therefore addresses a gap in the literature by exploring educators' (N = 1359) self-reported uses and perceptions of TpT. Participants reported intensive and multifaceted TpT use, in particular to address curriculum gaps and time pressures. Most respondents perceived TpT content to be of high quality, but many also noted challenges with TpT. We discuss implications related to education resource production, distribution, and consumption in a digital era.
PDF
