| Small and medium-sized enterprises(SMEs)play an important role in major economies.However,difficult and expensive financing has always been a stumbling block to the development of SMEs,which has directly brought negative effects to global economic development.In 2008,the financial crisis left these enterprises struggling to survive.The US government promulgated the "Jumpstart Our Business Startups(JOBS)Act" to relax financial regulations in order to help such enterprises obtain financing and increase employment.Under this opportunity,the crowdfunding industry has developed rapidly,and the American experience has been emulated by companies all over the world.Nowadays,crowdfunding has gradually integrated into people's daily lives.Given the importance of the crowdfunding mode,scholars have begun to provide guidance for crowdfunding decisions.Despite the increasing trend of crowdfunding literature,there are some limitations in current research,which are embodied in the following three aspects.First,mathematical models of crowdfunding pricing decisions are ignored some crowdfunding elements,which may lead to non-robust research results.Second,most researchers and corporate managers regard crowdfunding as a mere channel of financing,while ignoring other functions of crowdfunding.Third,current studies focus on issues from the perspective of the creator,while crowdfunding platforms also play an indispensable role in crowdfunding.So how to improve the existing crowdfunding pricing model?What other features of crowdfunding are not getting attention?How to optimize the profits of the enterprise from the perspective of crowdfunding platform?Solving the above problems can not only supplement relevant theoretical research,but also have practical significance.That is,on the one hand,it can provide decision reference for crowdfunding creators and crowdfunding platforms;On the other hand,it will help enterprise managers and researchers rethink the role of crowdfunding mode.Based on the above research background,the main research contents and conclusions of this dissertation are as follows:(1)The impact of cost factors on the optimal pricing strategy of crowdfunding is studied.In Chapter 3,the commonly used two-stage crowdfunding investment model is improved.Unit production cost and fixed cost are added into the improved model,and the freedom of threshold setting is considered.It is found that the impact of cost on pricing strategy cannot be ignored,and the two type cost factors have different effects.Through a discussion of threshold strategies,Chapter 3 also demonstrates how crowdfunding thresholds can be used to avoid low demand risk caused by consumer valuation uncertainty.Then,Chapter 3 analyzes the impact of platform service tariffing on pricing strategy.The results show that although the increase of platform service tariffing reduces the advantage of high pricing strategy to a greater extent,the feasible range of differentiated pricing strategy and low pricing strategy will also be narrowed.Finally,two new pricing strategies,menu pricing and dynamic pricing,are proposed in Chapter 3.It is proved that the effective premise of menu pricing is to use a high crowdfunding threshold to motivate consumers of high valuation type to make more investment,while the effective premise of dynamic pricing strategy is that the difference between high pricing strategy and low pricing strategy is small.In general,the two pricing strategies can improve crowdfunding performance when the cost and the proportion of consumers with high valuation are low.(2)The influence of product value uncertainty on the intertemporal pricing strategy of crowdfunding is studied.In Chapter 4,a two-stage crowdfunding model is established,in which a creator is considered to obtain financing in the crowdfunding stage and further sell the product in the retail stage.Based on the analysis of consumers' purchasing behavior,the optimal intertemporal pricing strategy of crowdfunding is given,and the existence of free-riding phenomenon is proved,which leads to the optimal crowdfunding price is not necessarily a monotonically increasing function of cost.Further research shows that,compared with the traditional sales model,crowdfunding takes advantage of the uncertainty of product value to obtain greater marginal revenue or more sales.However,the uncertainty of product value also reduces the willingness to pay of consumers with high valuation,which may lead to insufficient financing.Therefore,Chapter 4 proposes the use of refund mechanism to increase the possibility of successful crowdfunding.Finally,the influence of the number of consumers in crowdfunding stage,production risk and limited production capacity on the pricing strategy of crowdfunding is discussed.The results show that the creator should reduce the crowdfunding price to increase the participation of consumers in the crowdfunding stage,when the number of consumers is large or the success rate of production is low.Interestingly,production capacity constraints have a two-sided effect on the optimal crowdfunding price.(3)The differences between crowdfunding mode and traditional sales mode in operations management are studied.Chapter 5 first studies how a capital constrained supplier makes production and pricing decisions under crowdfunding mode and traditional sales mode,and compares the supplier profit and consumer welfare of the two sales modes.The conclusion shows that pareto improvement can be achieved in the crowdfunding mode,which is mainly attributed to the three functions of crowdfunding:financing mechanism,point provision mechanism and ex-post production mechanism.Then,in order to determine the independent contributions of the three mechanisms,Chapter 5 designs three scenarios and proves that the benefit of crowdfunding is greater than the sum of the benefits brought by the three separate mechanisms,which shows that the three mechanisms of crowdfunding are interactive.The equilibrium decision of crowdfunding under information asymmetry is further analyzed,it is found that the deferred payment mechanism is conducive to high-quality suppliers to adopt separation strategy,and the separation cost increases with the limitation of initial capital.Finally,the two sales modes are compared again under the assumption that the production is risky and the participants are risk averse.The conclusion shows that the crowdfunding mode is not necessarily the best choice.On this basis,the risk transfer mechanism of crowdfunding is revealed,and how to use deferred payment mechanism to realize risk sharing is demonstrated.(4)It studies how the crowdfunding platform chooses service contracts and makes coordination contracts.In Chapter 6,the interactive decision between the crowdfunding platform and the creator is established into the Starkelberg game model.On the basis of the profit maximization of the crowdfunding platform,the equilibrium decision under three classic contracts is analyzed,and the profit of each participant is compared.The conclusion shows that the revenue sharing contract(pro rata)and the revenue sharing contract(fixed)can bring higher profits to the crowdfunding platform,but are disadvantageous to the creator,while the effect of the fixed fee contract is opposite,and the first two contracts can achieve higher system profits.Then,in order to coordinate the decision-making of the whole system,Chapter 6 designs a two-part tariff contract,which can maximize the profit of the system and distribute the total profit according to any proportion.Finally,when the endogenous product value is considered,it is found that the free-riding effect reduces the efficiency of the proportional contract.To sum up,this dissertation has contributed to the existing research in the following four aspects.First,it supplements research on crowdfunding pricing strategy,considers the impact of cost factor and threshold strategy on the optimal pricing decision,and proposes the dynamic pricing strategy to improve crowdfunding performance.Second,it provides guidance for enterprise managers on how to optimize the long-term benefits of crowdfunding,and confirms the existence of free riding phenomenon.Thirdly,it analyzes the crowdfunding mode from the perspective of operation management for the first time,reveals the three mechanisms of crowdfunding and the nature of their interaction,and demonstrates the role of deferred payment mechanism in dealing with moral hazard and production risk.Fourthly,this dissertation studies the choice of service contract from the perspective of profit maximization of crowdfunding platform,which builds a bridge for crowdfunding literature and contract design research. |
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