Consider a market where identical products are sold to consumers via two competing platforms: one traditional and the other social-commerce-based. The social commerce platform operates a virtual community using two strategies: a competition strategy whereby the social commerce platform attracts and engages consumers through its virtual community, leading them to directly purchase products from its e-commerce channel, and a cooperation strategy whereby the social commerce platform integrates links to the traditional platform’s online channel within its community. We fully characterize the optimal decisions and corresponding profits and consumer surplus under each strategy. Our findings indicate that while platforms increase prices in a market with full coverage, they (weakly) decrease them in a market with partial coverage if consumer unit travel costs increase. Additionally, we explain how the revenue-sharing rate and spillover effect of a virtual community affect the cooperation strategy and discover that they have a nonmonotonic impact on the effort level of the social commerce platform. Importantly, we show that when the downstream market is partially covered, the cooperation strategy could result in a win-win-win situation for platforms, consumers, and social welfare. When the downstream market is fully covered, however, the cooperation strategy may result in a lose-win-lose, lose-win-win, or lose-lose-win situation for the social commerce platform, traditional platform, and consumers. Implementing the cooperation strategy might reduce social welfare. We also consider three extensions – sequential pricing, the traditional platform investing in its own virtual community, and a cooperation strategy with cost sharing – to check the robustness of the main results.

中文翻译：

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竞争还是合作：社交商务平台的策略分析


考虑这样一个市场，相同的产品通过两个相互竞争的平台销售给消费者：一个是传统平台，另一个是基于社交商务的平台。社交电商平台采用两种策略运营虚拟社区：竞争策略，即社交电商平台通过其虚拟社区吸引和吸引消费者，引导他们直接从其电商渠道购买产品；合作策略，即社交电商平台通过其虚拟社区吸引和吸引消费者，从而直接从其电子商务渠道购买产品。平台在其社区内集成了传统平台在线渠道的链接。我们充分描述了每种策略下的最优决策以及相应的利润和消费者剩余。我们的研究结果表明，虽然平台在完全覆盖的市场中提高价格，但如果消费者单位旅行成本增加，它们（微弱）会在部分覆盖的市场中降低价格。此外，我们解释了虚拟社区的收入分享率和溢出效应如何影响合作策略，并发现它们对社交商务平台的努力水平具有非单调影响。重要的是，我们表明，当下游市场被部分覆盖时，合作策略可以为平台、消费者和社会福利带来三赢的局面。但当下游市场全面覆盖时，社交电商平台、传统平台和消费者的合作策略可能会出现双输、双输、双输的局面。实施合作战略可能会减少社会福利。我们还考虑了三个扩展——顺序定价、投资自己的虚拟社区的传统平台以及成本分摊的合作策略——来检查主要结果的稳健性。