Bundling sales strategies in live-streaming operations: consumer heterogeneity and market information
研究了直播电商中捆绑销售策略的定价与规模决策，发现消费者异质性和市场信息影响策略盈利性，直播互动能促进捆绑购买转化。
The bundling strategy is widely applied in e-commerce for its competitive pricing and product diversification, particularly on live-streaming platforms, where consumers’ decisions between the bundling and direct purchasing are usually swayed by powerful live promotions and interactions. However, it also complicates the decision-making for both e-tailers and live-streaming platforms in terms of bundling price and size and particularly the information of market composition. Considering consumer heterogeneity, we establish a Stackelberg game model to explore the optimal decisions regarding price differentiation between direct and bundling sales, as well as the bundle size under different information sharing frameworks. We mainly find that: (i) The establishment of the bundling sales strategy depends on the market composition of consumers, while its profitability relies on consumer heterogeneity. (ii) The live-streaming interaction could convert more bundling purchasing from direct purchasing, enabling the e-tailers to introduce the bundling strategy to the markets with low consumer heterogeneity. (iii) The market information price primarily depends on the live-streaming traffic and commission rate, while the e-tailers' perception of market composition influences their decision to purchase it.