UNCERTAINTY OF CONSUMER PREFERENCES AND PRODUCT DIFFERENTIATION IN TWO THREE-STAGE HOTELLING MODELS

摘要：

Two three-stage Hotelling models are established by introducing firms’ uncertainty about consumer preferences. Through the two dynamic game models, location decisions and product differentiation problems are discussed. Under assumptions of quadratic transportation costs, consumer distributed uniformly and firms pricing (or locating) orderly, it is proved that each model has unique subgame perfect Nash equilibrium. The equilibrium results indicates that uncertainty can increase product differentiation and the firm who first prices (or locates) locates closer to market center, fixes higher equilibrium price and gains more equilibrium profit than the other one. At last, the socially optimal locations under uncertain consumer preferences are analyzed. The results show that the uncertainty also improves social product differentiation.

关键词： product differentiation uncertainty Hotelling model location decision

作者: Xing Mingqing Wang Laisheng Wang Xia

作者单位: College of Science, China Agriculture University, Beijing China Fujian Institute of Research on the Structure of Matter, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Fuzhou, China

会议类型: 国际会议

会议名称: 2007年技术创新、风险管理暨供应链管理国际研讨会

会议地点: 北京

会议语种:英文

在线出版日期: 2007-11-01（万方平台首次上网日期，不代表论文的发表时间）