Dynamic Pricing Competition with Strategic Customers Under Vertical Product Differentiation
研究了两家提供垂直差异化产品的企业在面对策略型顾客时的动态定价竞争，发现价格撇脂是唯一纯策略马尔可夫完美均衡，且低质量企业受顾客策略行为的影响更大。
We consider dynamic pricing competition between two firms offering vertically differentiated products to strategic customers who are intertemporal utility maximizers. We show that price skimming arises as the unique pure-strategy Markov perfect equilibrium in the game under a simple condition. Our results highlight the asymmetric effect of strategic customer behavior on quality-differentiated firms. Even though the profit of either firm decreases as customers become more strategic, the low-quality firm suffers substantially more than the high-quality firm. Furthermore, we show that unilateral commitment to static pricing by either firm generally improves profits of both firms. Interestingly, both firms enjoy higher profit lifts when the high-quality firm commits rather than when the low-quality firm commits. This paper was accepted by Yossi Aviv, operations management.