双维度下产品差异化设计与定价研究

研究单个制造商在不同渠道中销售产品时面临的产品双维度差异化设计策略选择和定价问题.在考虑横向和纵向双维度的基础上,探讨了制造商三种可能的差异化策略.构建模型证明了在横向和纵向差异化策略下,最优定价策略分别为统一定价和差异化定价.通过对比不同差异化策略发现,当只有单维度差异化策略(即只有横向或纵向差异化中的一种)可供选择时,在一定条件下产品无差异都可能成为最优策略.特别地,在横向差异化策略可供选择条件下,当产品无差异是最优策略时,制造商只选择生产高质量产品;而在纵向差异化情况下结论正好相反,即只选择生产低质量产品.当两个维度的差异化策略同时可供选择时,随着生产成本增大,横向差异化逐渐占优于纵向差异化;当产品横向差异化程度足够大时,无论成本大小,横向差异化都是最优策略.此外,还拓展研究了同时采用横向纵向差异化策略的情况.

Two-dimensional product differentiation and pricing strategies

This paper studies a manufacturer's two-dimensional product differentiation and pricing strategies when selling products in different channels. On the basis of the horizontal and vertical dimensions, we consider three possible product differentiation strategies. We find that the optimal pricing strategies in the cases of horizontal and vertical differentiation are uniform pricing and differentiated pricing, respectively. The comparisons among differentiation strategies suggest that when only single-dimensional differentiation (i.e., one horizontal differentiation or one vertical differentiation) is available, product indifference strategy can be the optimal strategy for the manufacturer under some conditions. Specifically, under the condition that only the horizontal differentiation strategy is available, when product indifference strategy is optimal, the manufacturer optimally chooses to produce high-quality products; however, in the case that only the vertical differentiation strategy is available, he chooses to produce only low-quality products. When both horizontal and vertical differentiation are available, with the increase of production cost, the horizontal differentiation gradually dominates the vertical differentiation; however, as long as the level of horizontal differentiation is high enough, regardless of the cost, the horizontal differentiation is always optimal for the manufacturer. Besides, we extend the situation of adopting horizontal and vertical differentiation strategy simultaneously.