资金限制下新创企业质量投资策略

对于资金不足发展受限的新创企业,谋求长远发展还是节约现金流以避免破产是投资产品质量权衡的重要依据.本文基于新创企业在每阶段末需要达到一定的利润额以维持生存,提出了基于利润追求和生存追求双目标情景下的两阶段动态质量投资模型.在考虑到消费者对产品质量偏好的不确定性、市场波动以及生存阈值等因素的影响下,本文基于模型逻辑推理论证不同运营目标下,新创企业通过协调定价和质量投资来应对破产风险的策略.发现在充分考虑质量偏好不确定性和市场波动的完全不确定环境下,利润追求型新创企业会同时提高(降低)相对于确定环境中的质量投资和产品价格,从而平衡短期生存压力和长期利润.质量偏好期望值和方差的增加将激励利润追求型新创企业提高质量投资;生存追求型新创企业将始终保持定价策略与质量投资正相关,从而控制长期的运营风险.质量偏好期望值达到一定程度或者质量偏好方差持续增加的话,生存追求型新创企业都会降低质量投资.此外,随着生存阈值的增加,利润追求型新创企业会持续降低质量投资;而生存追求型新创企业会先增加投资,后减少.最后,结合其他相关结果,本文给出了资金限制下新创企业的质量投资策略建议.

Quality investment of the capital-constrained startup

The finance-constrained startup always balances the trade-off between cash flow to avoid bankruptcy and quality investment for future growths. This study proposes a two-stage model to investigate the profit-seeking and survival-seeking strategies. It is set that startup must earn profit larger than the survival threshold by the end of every stage. We establish a hedge with price setting and quality investing strategies against the bankruptcy risk, and investigate how the uncertainty of preference for quality, market shock, and survival threshold affect the hedges. Results show that than the deterministic case, the profit-seeking startup will set lower (higher) price and invest in lower (higher) quality in the stochastic environment. Its quality investment will be encouraged by both increasing mean and increasing variance. Besides, the survival-seeking startup always sets its price linked to quality in positive direction in the stochastic environment. Its quality investment will be cut down when the mean of preference for quality increases to a certain level or the variance of preference for quality increases. What's more, as the survival threshold increases, the profit-seeking startup always decreases its investment, while the survival-seeking startup increases its investment first, and then decreases its investment. Finally, this paper provides the startup managers some guidance on the quality investing strategy under financial constraint.