Exogenous Learning, Seller-Induced Learning, and Marketing of Durable Goods
研究垄断厂商在推出耐用品时，外生学习与卖方诱导学习如何影响产品发布时机和定价，发现学习强度与发布时机的关系并非单调，且卖方诱导学习在不同成本下导致不同策略。
When learning of product characteristics takes some time, a firm introducing a new durable faces the trade-off between releasing early to an uninformed market and deferring release to a better-informed market. In a two-period monopoly, we examine the strategic interaction between exogenous learning (EL) and seller-induced learning (SIL) and the firm's product release and pricing strategies. The familiar, direct effect of strong learning is to facilitate a higher price for informed customers. We point out its indirect effect of inducing a higher period 1 price for uninformed customers (by lowering their expected utility from learning). These two effects underlie three major results. First, a strong learning intensity does not always imply deferred release. Surprisingly, for medium unit costs, the firm releases late (early) when learning intensity is weak (strong). Second, SIL facilitates different product release strategies, depending on the unit cost level. Potential SIL investment facilitates early release for low or medium unit costs, but may facilitate deferred release for high unit costs. Lastly, when customers have heterogeneous prior valuation, the high-end customers may buy early at a lower price and the low-end customers may buy later at a higher price, contrary to the usual skim pricing with informed customers. This paper was accepted by Preyas Desai, marketing.