题目：The Strategic Provision of Parallel Evaluation Tools by Online Marketplaces

主讲人：刘霖, Assistant Professor, College of Business Administration,University of Central Florida 

时间：2018年7月12日（周四） 下午1:00-2:30

地点：中欧平台武东路校区大楼114室

摘要：

This study explores the strategic provision of parallel evaluation tools by an online marketplace and its implications on consumers’ product evaluation as well as sellers’ price competition. A marketplace normally provides parallel tools in complicated categories (e.g., TVs and laptops) to make it easier for consumers to evaluate products in a parallel manner. Our results show that the marketplace can obtain profits with parallel tools that can exceed the highest possible profit without using these tools. This is because when parallel tools are not used the search prevention effect from price keeps profit low. We have also explored block search in which blocks of products can be searched in a sequential manner while the products in a block are searched in parallel manner, and we have provided results that are new to the literature.