Lecturer

Assistant Professor, Zhan Yuandong, University College of London, UK

Time

Jan 5^th, 2016, Tue. 9:30-11:30 AM

Add

2^nd F, Management Building, Main Campus

Synopses

We study   vertical probabilistic selling (mixing products with different qualities)   when firms compete, and consumers have different abilities to anticipate the   potential post-purchase regret raised by the possibility of obtaining the   inferior products. We show that, when consumers have either no or full   ability to anticipate the regret, probabilistic selling emerges only when the   product differentiation between firms is intermediate. However, when   consumers have partial ability to anticipate the regret, probabilistic   selling will arise more often and yield higher profit compared with the   previous two cases. This is due to the “reverse quality discrimination”: the   perceived quality of the random product becomes non-increasing in consumer   type. Such reverse discrimination can increase product differentiation at   competition margin and, meanwhile, maintain sufficient attractiveness of the   random product for infra-marginal consumers.

Biography

Doctor Zhan   Yuandong, is now engaged at University College of London (UCL),  

He graduated   from Marshall Business School of University of Southern California as Ph.D in   Operation Management in the United States. He obtained BA & MA at Tsinghua   University. He focuses on study of Service Operation, Queuing Game, Data   Driven Operation, Industry Organization, Marketing Interface with Operation   Management. His papers published on top academic journals such as Manufacturing   & Service Operations Management（M&SOM）