| With the rapid development of digital technology,human society has moved from the traditional industrial era driven by capitalism to the information era.In this process,the global platform economy has risen strongly.The rapid increase of the transaction scale not only saves a lot of intermediary costs,improves the allocation efficiency of bilateral resources,but also amplifies the economic losses and social impact caused by improper and insufficient platform governance.Among them,the quality problems of online shopping products have been exposed one after another,which has caused extensive controversy in the society.However,most of the existing literature focuses on analyzing the relationship between platform strategy and "quantity".So far,there is little theoretical research on the impact of platform autonomy strategy and its welfare effect based on product quality.Therefore,based on the existing research,this paper will analyze the self governance incentive and its effect of the whole operation link of platform enterprises from the perspective of product quality,and put forward corresponding policy suggestions for platform supervision based on the goal of maximizing social welfare.The basic ideas of this paper are as follows.Firstly,sort out the relevant literature of platform economy,find the existing antitrust and social cases,and find out the relevant research gaps by comparing the existing literature and practical problems.Secondly,combined with practical problems,from the perspective of product quality,this paper analyzes the self governance incentive and its impact of the platform from four transaction links: merchant entry,merchant operation,post purchase evaluation and final return.Finally,by comparing with the existing research conclusions,defines the research value of this paper and provides suggestions for the improvement of the platform governance strategy.Specifically,this paper analyzes the self governance effect of the platform from the perspectives of actual product quality and expected product quality:From the perspective of the impact of platform governance on product quality,firstly,in the stage of merchant access platform,under the setting of exogenous product quality,this paper analyzes the driving force of platform governance on fake and shoddy merchants.It is found that the quality difference between the two types of products is the key to determine the platform governance intensity.The greater the quality difference,the stronger the platform governance intensity.The governance incentives of platforms under different market structures are different: the stronger the network externality and the greater the quality difference,the greater the governance intensity of platforms under monopoly markets;the weaker the network externality and the smaller the quality difference,the greater the governance intensity of the platform in the oligopoly market.From the perspective of maximizing the total social welfare,the government supervision should be improved with the improvement of network externalities and product quality differences.Then,in the business operation stage,based on the quality R & D incentive research framework,analyze the impact of the commission rules set by the platform on the final product quality.It is found that when the commission proportion set by the existing platform is too high,opening the access of the third-party platform is conducive to improve the R & D incentive of merchants,so as to promote the improvement of product quality.However,the impact of quality improvement on consumer welfare and total social welfare is uncertain,which depends on the quality difference between platforms and the degree of consumer difference:when the quality difference between platforms is large or the proportion of quality insensitive consumers is low,the control should focus on reducing the commission proportion;when the quality difference between platforms is small or the proportion of quality insensitive consumers is large,control should focus on opening third-party payment channels.Compared with existing studies,the contribution of this paper is to enrich the research on platform governance from the perspective of product quality.When the product quality is exogenous,by introducing the key feature of network externality,this paper makes a more comprehensive investigation of the incentive similarities and differences between platform governance and government supervision under different market structures,which makes this part of the research more in line with the real scene and puts forward more feasible policy suggestions for the supervision of relevant departments.When product quality is endogenous,combining the platform strategy with quality R & D efficiency,this paper discusses the impact of commission ratio and exclusive access rules on merchants’ quality R & D incentive,and gives feasible policy suggestions from the perspective of maximizing social welfare.From the perspective of expected product quality,based on the uncertainty of platform product quality before actual purchase,this paper discusses the platform self governance incentive and its impact from the perspectives of evaluation reference and return guarantee.Firstly,in the evaluation reference stage before consumers purchase,this paper analyzes the incentive of merchants manipulating comments in the competitive market environment,and studies the governance strategy of the platform for this phenomenon.Research has found that the incentives for merchants to manipulate comments decrease with the improvement of their own product quality or the quality of rivals’ products.When comments have little(large)impact on phase II consumption,the platform does not(have)incentive to govern comment manipulation.The government’s control over the platform should decrease(increase)with the improvement of the quality of comment manipulated merchants and increase(decrease)with the improvement of the quality of non manipulated merchants when the impact of comments is small(large).Then,in the final return stage of shopping,this paper introduces the setting of consumer lost aversion,and analyzes the impact of different return security rules on social welfare.The study found that merchants and platforms have incentives to trigger additional losses to consumers by shortening the return period for the purpose of further expanding the differences between products and alleviating market competition.For merchants with uncertain product quality,shortening the return period can adjust consumers’ expected quality to the “optimal quality” point.Before the “optimal quality”point,merchants’ profits increase with the increase of consumers’ loss coefficient.After the “optimal quality” point,the merchants’ profit decreases with the increase of consumer loss coefficient.Compared with merchants’ incentives,the platform hopes to shorten the return period in a broader market environment based on the consideration of alleviating market competition.Therefore,it is entirely up to the platform to decide the return period,which will cause great damage to consumers’ rights and interests.Government regulation should protect consumers’ rights and interests by extending the return period and enriching product publicity means.Compared with the existing research,the contribution of this paper is to enrich the research on platform governance from the perspective of product expected quality.In the comment reference stage before shopping,this paper extends the research on comment manipulation to the competitive market,clarifies the impact of comment manipulation on other merchants,and further analyzes the relationship between governance strategy and market environment from the perspective of platform governance.In the final return stage of shopping,from the perspective of behavioral economics,this paper analyzes the relationship between the choice of platform return guarantee and consumer sentiment,which makes the analysis results closer to reality and more conducive to the regulatory authorities to make a reasonable judgment. |
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