結合飢餓行銷之訂價與產能規劃研究

Abstract

本研究探討如何利用訂價及產能決策達到飢餓行銷獲利的目的。飢餓行銷為製造商刻意減少產量，利用產能決策製造供不應求的現象，達到增加產品附加價值的行銷策略。此策略利用顧客在面臨產品熱銷缺貨，以及排隊消費時所產生之額外社會地位效用(Social Status Utility)來調控供需。對於顧客而言，若是越早取得不易購買之商品，越能彰顯自己的地位(Status)，此外缺貨的現象、漫長的等候線會傳遞出商品擁有卓越品質的訊息(Signal Quality)，並且引起從眾效應(Bandwagon Effect)。過去文獻鮮少探討飢餓行銷問題，尤其尚未有研究考量產品等待時間影響顧客效用函數，在本文中影響顧客效用函數之因素包括:(1)產品本身的效用。(2)顧客等待的時間。(3)產品價格。廠商可以透過產能決策達到適當的缺貨程度，提高消費者購買意願，此外由於每一位顧客對產品本身的喜好不同，某些顧客會願意付高價提早得到商品以區分自身與他人的不同，而其他消費者則選擇等到產品降價在考慮購入，因此動態訂價為廠商為了得到不同顧客群之市占率所產生的決策，以利將最多的消費者剩餘轉換成利潤。 本研究將模型分為下列兩種狀況分析:(1)顧客無法觀察等候線狀況。(2)消費者能夠精準預測自身的等待時間。此外，分別針對擁有完全理性、不耐久候以及從眾效應特性顧客之市場環境做個別探討。數值分析結果證明，當顧客不易觀察自身等候時間時，飢餓行銷較能夠達到獲利的效果，同時廠商訂價趨勢為階梯狀；而當顧客能夠準確推估等待時間時，廠商會放棄飢餓行銷策略並大幅度提高產能決策，偏向利用線性降價的方式提高收益。

This research studies pricing and capacity planning problems under hunger marketing. Hunger marketing is a tool used to influence customers’ demand behavior by providing limited product supply. Due to the inventory shortages and long queues, customers who buy the product earlier will enhance their social status. In addition, the popularity of products (or maybe bandwagon effect) also serves an indicator or superior product quality and to attract more attention from consumers. The long waiting queue will lure more potential buyers to join based on the reasons that have mentioned above. There are few literatures discussed the hunger marketing issues, especially the customers demand are influenced by the waiting time. In our research, customer’s utility function for the product depends on: (1) Customer Waiting Time (2) Product Utility (3) Product Price. To benefit from hunger marketing strategy, the company decision maker must determine a proper capacity level. Furthermore, different customer has his/her own individual appetite toward the product. Thus, some people buy earlier owing to the benefit of showing of their difference, but others wait until the price dropped as a result of they cannot afford it. Hence, the company can take more customers surplus from the market by changing its price. Our model establish two types of condition that happened in the hunger marketing such as customers have a difficult with observing the queue length, and they can figure out the exact waiting time. We analyzed three kinds of customers who have different attitude while they are waiting. Situations that including customers have the same sensitivity in benefit of waiting and cost of waiting, another is they easily run out of patience and hard to be lured by the long queues, and the other is they have a bandwagon effect that consumers simply follow the trend to purchase. In conclusion, numerical studies showed that when customers cannot catch the precise time they will wait, hunger marketing strategy is beneficial and pricing strategy has a ladder tendency. In contrast, when every customer knows his/her waiting time precisely, company will no longer do the hunger marketing, and rely on mark down pricing to earn more profit.