Abstract: The pricing strategy is the key to successfully launching innovative products. Traditional pricing strategies are skimming pricing and penetration pricing. Skimming pricing can gain high profits but keep potential consumers out of market and hinder market development efficiency, while penetration pricing can rapidly capture market share at the expense of profits. With the development of online community, however, a new business model, named group purchase, has been devised and the working mechanism is as follows: Make the group purchase price slightly lower than the evaluation of innovative products by the consumers who are concerned about the new products and willing to pay high price for early adoption in order to activate their perception of consumer surplus (consumer surplus is additional benefit that consumers receive because they are paying less for commodity than what they were willing to pay). Early adopters have to recruit adequate buyers before the deadline if they want the consumer surplus. As a result, they prefer to spread product knowledge and share their experience with potential consumers who have little product information in online community. Through community interaction and learning, potential consumers improve their evaluation of innovations and join the group purchase. In this way, group purchase pricing strategy can not only ensure the ideal profits with relatively high price, but also influence more potential consumers to buy new products due to community learning effect. Compared with traditional skimming pricing and penetration pricing, the group purchase pricing strategy based on online community learning mechanism can achieve an effective balance between the profits rate and the market share under certain conditions. In order to explore these necessary conditions, this paper studies the influencing factors on optimal profits and sales of group purchase pricingstrategy compared with skimming pricing and penetration pricing. The research may contribute to enriching the theory of pricing strategy for innovative products and helping firms achieve an effective balance between the profit rate and the market share for innovative products.
Firstly, online community learning effect influencing individual purchase decision model is established according to online community learning mechanism and Bayesian formula andoptimal profits and sales models of group purchase pricing are constructed. Secondly, based on the above work, the profit comparison model of group purchase pricing vs. skimming pricing and the sales comparison model of group purchase pricing vs. penetration pricing are constructed respectively. Lastly, we conduct simulation experiments on these models by using MATLAB software, and explore the factors that influence group purchase pricing to become dominate strategy.
Firstly, community learning effect is positively correlated with community size, community activity, community identity and community interaction efficiency, and negatively correlated with heterogeneity of community members. Secondly, through simulation experiments, we find that the maximum profits and sales of group purchase pricing for innovative products are positively correlated with community size, community activity, community identity and community interaction efficiency, and negatively correlated with heterogeneity of community members. Lastly, when community size, community activity, community identity and community interaction efficiency are higher than a certain threshold and heterogeneity of community members is below a certain threshold, the group purchase pricing strategy can achieve an effective balance between the profit rate and the market share for innovative products and become the dominant strategy. The research results will help firms employ group purchase pricing strategy to launch innovative products successfully.

Key words: community learning, innovative products, group purchase, pricing strategy

摘要： 创新产品定价是其成功上市的重要影响因素。与传统的撇脂和渗透定价策略相比,基于网络社群学习机制的团购定价策略在满足一定条件下可以同时实现产品利润与市场占有率之间的有效平衡。为了探究这些必要条件,本文研究了网络社群学习效果对消费者购买决策的影响因素,并分别构建了团购定价与撇脂定价的利润比较模型,团购定价与渗透定价的销量比较模型。通过对模型进行仿真实验发现:创新产品团购定价的最优利润和最优销量与社群规模、活跃度、认同度以及交互效率呈正相关,与社群成员异质性呈负相关;当社群规模、活跃度、认同度以及交互效率高于一定阈值,社群成员异质性低于一定阈值时,基于网络社群学习机制的创新产品团购定价策略最优利润高于撇脂定价策略,最优销量高于渗透定价策略,成为优势定价策略。

关键词: 社群学习, 创新产品, 网络团购, 定价策略