Abstract: Consumers have different preferences for different attributes of products, and have salient thinking behaviors. This paper uses the salience theory to study the optimal quality and price decisions of duopoly firms when there are two types of consumers with different sensitivity to quality and price in the market. The salience theory model is introduced into the classic Hotelling model to construct the utility function of consumers, the demand function and profit function when firms implement uniform pricing and discrimination pricing are obtained respectively. We analyze the impact of consumers' salient thinking behavior on the optimal profit when the firms implement the two strategies, and formulate the optimal equilibrium price-quality strategy for the two firms. The results show that the game equilibrium results of the two firms in different scenarios are to adopt the same strategy, and there is an optimal degree of consumers' salient thinking; that under the discrimination pricing strategy, firms set high prices for quality-sensitive consumers and low prices for price-sensitive consumers; that discrimination pricing strategy are better than uniform pricing strategy in most situations.

Key words: salience theory, price-quality competition, Hotelling model

摘要： 消费者对产品不同属性存在不同偏好,具有显著性思考行为。本文借助显著性理论,研究市场中存在对质量和价格具有不同敏感程度的两种类型消费者时,双寡头竞争企业的最优质量和价格决策。在经典Hotelling模型中引入显著性理论模型构造消费者的效用函数,分别得到企业实施统一定价和歧视定价时的需求函数与利润函数,分析消费者显著性思考行为对企业实施两种策略时最优利润的影响,制定出利润最大化时两家企业的最优均衡价格———质量策略。结果表明,不同情境下两家企业的博弈均衡结果均是采取相同的策略,且均存在一个最优的消费者显著性思维程度;歧视定价策略下,企业针对质量敏感型消费者定价偏高,针对价格敏感型消费者定价偏低;大部分情境下歧视定价策略优于统一定价策略。

关键词: 显著性理论, 价格——质量竞争, Hotelling模型