Research On The Formation Mechanism And Market Effect Of Platform-Led Certification

In the context of the transformation of China’s consumption patterns and the integration of the Internet economy,online transactions have achieved unprecedented development in recent years.However,the degree of information asymmetry in the online market is naturally higher than that in the offline market.The adverse selection and moral hazard problems caused by it have become the persistent diseases restricting the healthy development of the online market.In order to alleviate market failures caused by information asymmetry,online trading platforms have long introduced market mechanisms such as sellers’ individual reputations and buyer protection plans.The introduction of these systems has played an important role in promoting the rapid development of early domestic online markets.However,with the continuous breeding of market chaos such as "swiping orders" and buying praise,as well as the deficiencies of the system itself such as consumer evaluation bias and high transaction rights protection costs,the positive role of these systems in the current market environment has been continuously weakened.In response to this,in recent years,major online market trading platforms have used their own underlying big data advantages to introduce a new type of platform-led certification mechanism to alleviate the information asymmetry problem in the online market.Based on the particularity of the online market in terms of certification mechanism target constraints and certification reliability internal incentives,this dissertation builds a theoretical model to focus on analyzing the internal mechanism of platform-led certification system design,and systematically investigates the influence mechanism of platform-led certification on the market demand side and supply side,on the one hand,enriches the theoretical research on the design of certification mechanism,On the other hand,it also provides a reference for further improving the online and offline market certification system.Different from the traditional voluntary certification and mandatory certification,platform-led certification is a market platform that uses the bottom big data to periodically assess the quality of goods and services of all sellers on the platform.The trading platform has the dual roles and attributes of commodity market provider and certification authority.In the aspect of system design,the dominant certification of online market platform is constrained by maximizing the income of the whole business ecosystem of the group to which the platform belongs.According to the characteristics of the current online market platform dominated certification,this dissertation puts forward the basic theoretical model assumptions consistent with the reality,and respectively investigates the market equilibrium under the traditional"active payment" voluntary certification mode and the new "passive free" certification mode in the online market,Under the background of large differences in the quality of sellers in the online market,it can be concluded that the latter brings higher benefits to the platform than the former,and the greater the externality benefit coefficient of the platform,the greater the advantage range of the "passive free" certification mode.Second,examine the demand-side effect of platform-led certification on the online market.Through the construction of a demand effect model and a two-round transaction model system,the demand promotion effect of the certification mechanism and its relationship with industry characteristics and seller reputation were investigated.The study found that the introduction of certification mechanism can increase the sales volume of certified sellers in the online market.The increase in sales volume obtained by certification is negatively correlated with the average quality level of the seller’s industry,and positively correlated with the level of competition in the industry and the output price.Sellers with low reputation receive high sales volume growth from certification for high-reputation sellers,the introduction of the certification mechanism is conducive to the entry of high-quality new sellers into the market,and it can avoid the possibility of the failure of the reputation mechanism leading to the shrinking of demand in the entire industry.The exploratory empirical research in this article also found that compared with the increase in sales brought to sellers by certification,although the loss of certification will reduce sellers’ sales,the decline is relatively small.Through theoretical models,the demand stealing and expansion effects of the certification mechanism are sorted out from the individual seller level and the overall industry level.This study finds that when an enterprise newly obtains the certification,it will reduce the sales volume of the competitors,and the new certification enterprise reduces the sales volume of the originally certified enterprises more than the non-certification enterprises.This demand stealing effect of certification is negatively correlated with the size of the enterprises and positively correlated with the price of the products.At the same time,with the increase of certified enterprises,the total market demand will also expand.The above conclusions further indicate that the increase in sales volume of enterprises after newly certified is not only from the reduction of competitors’ sales,but also a part of the newly created market demand.In addition,the theoretical model of this dissertation also deduces that the higher the probability of identifying the high quality enterprises by the certification institution,the greater the effect of the certification demand expansion.Finally,it examines the supply-side effect of platform-led certification on the online market.By constructing two progressive comparative static models,the introduction of the certification system has respectively sorted out the improvement mechanism of the average quality of sellers in the online market and the influence mechanism of the adjustment of certification standards on the evolution of seller quality.Research shows that the introduction of a platform-led certification mechanism has improved the average quality of online market sellers through two ways:adverse selection weakening effect and moral hazard weakening effect.The improvement of certification standards,on the one hand,improves the average quality of certified sellers and non-certified sellers,and has a significant quality improvement effect.On the other hand,it also makes the distribution of low-quality sellers and high-quality sellers present an obvious "thick tail" phenomenon,which has a significant quality differentiation effect.At the same time,in the online market,sellers will not only increase the types of products they sell after being certified,but also increase the sales of high-value products.This dissertation takes the gold seller certification introduced by Taobao,the largest online trading platform in China,as an example.Based on the quasi-experimental matching method,the hypotheses proposed by the above theoretical models have been empirically tested in the Chinese context,and the test results are relatively robust.Analyzing from the perspective of information asymmetry,there is no essential difference between the information environment of the online market and the offline market.Therefore,from this perspective,the operating logic and impact results of the certification mechanism based on the online market are also applicable.to the offline market.Based on the above research conclusions,this article first puts forward the following recommendations for various online trading platforms:one is to introduce platform-led certification mechanisms in a timely manner to improve competitive advantage;the other is to appropriately adjust the certification standards according to the nature of the platform and the externality gain coefficient;the third is to improve The frequency of certification further increases the dimension of assessment.At the same time,in order to further improve the design of the offline market certification mechanism,this article puts forward thefollowing policy recommendations:First,while relaxing the certification industry access,it is necessary to increase the supervision of certification agencies to ensure the reliability of certification signals;second,according to industry characteristics and the operating status of the reputation mechanism makes reasonable use of the certification mechanism to avoid excessive certification traps;the third is to promote the merger and reorganization of the certification industry to reduce technical financial barriers for enterprises to improve quality;the fourth is to appropriately increase certification standards and increase the promotion and disclosure of certification information.