讲座题目：Manipulation for Competition: Agency Pricing in the Presence of Quality Misrepresentation

讲座人：郑兴 (Hsing Kenneth Cheng)教授

主持人：李凯教授

讲座时间：2021年5月27日（星期四）上午9：00

讲座地点：腾讯会议（欢迎有兴趣参与讲座的师生于5月26日之前发邮件至8160589@nankai.edu.cn获取腾讯会议ID，来邮烦请注明学校和姓名！）

讲座摘要：

On e-commerce platforms, consumers rely heavily on online product reviews, sales volume, number of product page visits, and social media discussions to infer product quality. As a result, the past decade has witnessed an explosive growth of seller-initiated misrepresentation of quality through fake reviews, fake sales volume, and fake clicks, all used to manipulate consumers’ quality perception of products. In this study, we develop an analytical model to investigate sellers’ quality misrepresentation decisions under the agency pricing regime. The platform can use two strategies to discourage sellers’ quality misrepresentations: increasing the cost of misrepresentation and implementing a more lenient product return policy. We find that while a stricter anti-misrepresentation strategy can deter the misrepresentation level of the high-quality seller, such strategy may unintendedly incentivize the low-quality seller to conduct more quality misrepresentation. Further, increasing return leniency can deter low-quality seller’s quality misrepresentation level in a wider range of market conditions than increasing the misrepresentation cost. Finally, the platform can decide the anti-misrepresentation strategies and the strength of these strategies based on its specific objective. The findings demonstrate the necessity of evaluating anti-misrepresentation strategies in a competitive setting.

讲座人简介：

郑兴教授(Hsing Kenneth Cheng)现任美国佛罗里达大学沃灵顿商学院终身教授及John B. Higdon杰出讲座教授，佛罗里达大学信息系统与运营管理系(Information System and Operation Management)系主任(2011-14, 2020至今)。研究方向为电子商务、互联网技术对软件开发和营销的影响、信息系统政策问题等方面。郑教授在关于软件开发策略和网络中立性方面的研究成果具有开创性意义，尤其有关软件盗版原因发表的一系列研究成果为企业伦理管理做出了突出贡献，发表论文“Toward a Profile of Student Piraters”成为Journal of Business Ethics创刊30周年以来发表4747篇论文中精选最优秀的49篇论文之一。据Google统计，截止2016年1月郑教授发表论文“The Debate on Net Neutrality – A Policy Perspective”被近152,000网站引用，同时被刊登在美国《商业周刊》并接受美国著名咨询杂志“计算机世界”的采访；发表论文“Estimating Social Influences from Social Networking Sites”獲得2015年国际顶级决策科学期刊Decision Sciences Journal最卓越貢獻论文獎。据国际信息系统协会研究(Association for Information Systems)，郑教授在信息系统三大顶级期刊发表数量排名上，2010年至2012年在全球信息系统领域最优秀的100名学者中名列第16位, 2016年至2020名列第32位。郑教授曽任国际顶级期刊Information Systems Research副主编,目前同时兼任国际顶级期刊Decision Sciences Journal和Journal of the Association for Information Systems的副主编及資深主編，并曾任运营管理顶级期刊Production and Operations Management特刊主编。曾经担任包括信息系统国际顶级会议INFORMS的程序委员会委员以及分会主席，以及2003、2012年度国际最重要的电子商务研讨会Workshop on E-Business的联合主席。