Abstract: At present, offering time-locked free trial has been a common practice of software manufactures to reduce consumers’ uncertainty about product quality and to promote the diffusion of new products. Related research is mostly confined to monopoly situation, but rarely analyzes the common oligopolistic situation in reality. Considering consumer learning heterogeneity after trial, we build a Hotelling model to examine the equilibrium to the trial-offering game between duopoly firms, and possible influencing factors. The results show that: (1)If the expected consumer experience of both firms is very good, both should offer; if poor, neither offers. (2)Otherwise, the equilibrium further depends on consumers’ sensitivity to the horizontal differentiation between firms. If consumers are trivially sensitive to horizontal differentiation, firms must take opposite trial-offering strategies, and moreover, only when the gap between firms in expected consumer experience is very large, the superior offers while the inferior does not; otherwise, they just need to keep contrary in trial-offering strategies. If consumers are very sensitive to horizontal differentiation, firms just need to take the same trial-offering strategy. (3)As the required time for consumers to completely learn the software becomes longer, regions “Just keep the same” and “Neither offers” expand, while regions “Must be contrary” and “Both offer” shrink. This is the first exploration of free trial strategy competition problem, and the results can complement and promote relevant theoretical research, and also can provide scientific guidance for relevant practice.

Key words: time-locked trials, Hotelling model, experience goods, consumer learning

摘要： 目前,提供限时免费试用已经成为软件厂商降低消费者对产品质量不确定性及促进新产品扩散的常见做法。现有研究多局限于垄断情况,对现实中常出现的寡头竞争情况鲜有探讨。在考虑消费者学习异质性的基础上,基于Hotelling模型研究了双寡头企业免费试用策略博弈均衡及其影响因素。结果表明:(1)如果两家企业的期望用户体验都比较好,都应该提供免费试用;如果期望用户体验都比较差,都不提供。(2)否则,均衡结果进一步取决于消费者对他们之间水平差异的敏感性。如果很不敏感,则两家企业必须采取相反的免费试用提供策略,并且只有当它们的期望用户体验差距很大时,优势企业一定提供而劣势企业不提供;否则,保持相反即可。如果非常敏感,则两家企业只需在免费试用提供策略上保持一致即可。(3)消费者完全学习软件所需时间越长,两家企业“都不提供”和“只需一致”的可能性增大,而“都提供”和“必定相反”的可能性降低。这是对免费试用策略竞争问题进行的首次探索,所得结果对相关理论研究具有补充和促进作用,也能为相关实践提供科学的决策依据。

关键词: 限时免费试用, Hotelling模型, 经验品, 消费者学习