Selling to Conspicuous Consumers: Pricing, Production, and Sourcing Decisions
研究了生产炫耀性商品（如设计师服装、时尚品）的企业如何制定定价和生产决策，发现企业可能选择高供应量而非稀缺策略，并指出采购策略（如使用昂贵原材料）可帮助可信地承诺稀缺性以提升利润。
Consumers often purchase goods that are “hard to find” to conspicuously display their exclusivity and social status. Firms that produce such conspicuously consumed goods such as designer apparel, fashion goods, jewelry, etc., often face challenges in making optimal pricing and production decisions. Such firms are confronted with precipitous trade-off between high sales volume and high margins, because of the highly uncertain market demand, strategic consumer behavior, and the display of conspicuous consumption. In this paper, we propose a model that addresses pricing and production decisions for a firm, using the rational expectations framework. We show that, in equilibrium, firms may offer high availability of goods despite the presence of conspicuous consumption. We show that scarcity strategies are harder to adopt as demand variability increases, and we provide conditions under which scarcity strategies could be successfully adopted to improve profits. Finally, to credibly commit to scarcity strategy, we show that firms can adopt sourcing strategies, such as sourcing from an expensive production location/supplier or using expensive raw materials. This paper was accepted by Preyas Desai and Pradeep Chintagunta, marketing.