Push or Pull? Design of Content Delivery Systems
研究了内容提供商在推送与拉取两种交付系统中的最优推送频率决策，以及消费者如何选择推送或拉取，发现高推送频率可吸引高类型消费者并形成市场细分。
ABSTRACT Advances in information technology, especially the expansion of cellular and WiFi networks, are dramatically changing how people consume digital content. These changes in user access behavior present a challenge of delivering content to a diversified consumer base. This article addresses this challenge by identifying the key factors for the design of content delivery systems (gross value of content, delivery delay, sensitivity to delivery delay, accessing cost, and processing cost) and explicitly modeling their interactions. We investigate two content delivery systems—push and pull systems, and solve for the content provider's optimal push frequency decision and consumers’ push versus pull decisions. We show that the content provider's selection of push frequency plays a critical role determining the segmentation of the consumer market into the push group and the pull group. Our findings suggest that firms should set a relatively high push frequency to cater to high‐type consumers, which leads to two consumer groups with low‐type consumers belonging to the pull group and high‐type consumers belonging to the push group.