Yang Ying, Chai Rui, Sun Xinyu, Li Yiming
School of Economics and Management, Xidian University, Xi'an, 710126 China.
Research Center for Digital Economy (Greater Bay Area), School of Economics and Management Shenzhen Research Institute, Tsinghua University, Shenzhen, 518057 China.
J Syst Sci Complex. 2022;35(6):2302-2318. doi: 10.1007/s11424-022-1262-x. Epub 2022 Dec 28.
Motivated by the practice that e-sellers cooperate with insurance companies to offer consumers the return-freight insurance (RI), this paper aims to investigate the competing e-sellers' RI strategies. Regarding the information asymmetry in the online context, reputation system is widely applied by e-platforms. In an online market with two competing e-sellers that sell the same product but are differentiated in their reputation, this paper builds an analytical model to explore the e-sellers optimal pricing and RI strategies. Combined with sellers' reputation and their RI strategies, the equilibrium outcomes under four cases are discussed. This paper reveals the conditions that e-sellers are willing to offer RI. Specifically, the findings demonstrate that low reputation e-seller is more likely to offer RI. Moreover, when the sellers are more divergent, they are more likely to co-exist in the market. Insurance premium and RI compensation play critical roles in their decisions. RI introduction tends to increase the price, thus offsets the benefits of RI, but does not affect the total consumer surplus.
受电商卖家与保险公司合作向消费者提供运费险这一实践的启发，本文旨在研究相互竞争的电商卖家的运费险策略。考虑到在线环境中的信息不对称，声誉系统被电商平台广泛应用。在一个有两个相互竞争的电商卖家的在线市场中，他们销售相同的产品，但声誉不同，本文构建了一个分析模型来探索电商卖家的最优定价和运费险策略。结合卖家的声誉和他们的运费险策略，讨论了四种情况下的均衡结果。本文揭示了电商卖家愿意提供运费险的条件。具体而言，研究结果表明，声誉较低的电商卖家更有可能提供运费险。此外，当卖家差异更大时，他们更有可能在市场中共存。保险费和运费险补偿在他们的决策中起着关键作用。引入运费险往往会提高价格，从而抵消运费险的好处，但不会影响消费者总剩余。
