Time：2023. 9. 11（Monday）10:00-11:30
Venue：Conference Room 1 of BMIB（2261）, Songjiang Campus
Speaker：Zhangxing, Assistant Professor at the School of Business Studies, Seung Jung kwan University, South Korea
Host: Professor Shen Qiang
Topic：Hooked: A strategic analysis of addictive product design
Abstract:
Many vice products, e.g., video games, exhibit a feature of “addictiveness”: the more consumers have consumed the product in the past, the harder for them to refrain from consuming now. The firm has incentives to increase addictiveness to increase the demand for the products, and meanwhile, it has to address consumers' concerns about over-consumption problems when “hooked”. We model a firm's product design decision involving the product's addictiveness, a dis-utility experienced by consumers if they refrain from consuming. We find the optimal price and profits first increase and then decrease with the addictiveness. The optimal addictiveness decreases with the severity of the self-control problem and increases with the harmfulness due to over-consumption. Interestingly, consumer and social welfare can increase with addictiveness. We extend the analysis to price contract design problem and competitive strategy.
Guest Speaker
Zhang Xing, graduated with a PhD from the National University of Singapore and is currently an assistant professor at the School of Business Studies (SKK GSB) at Sung Joongkwan University in South Korea. The research direction is the application of behavioral decision-making theory in marketing. In recent years, relevant research has been published in world-class academic journals such as Management Science, Journal of Marketing Research, and PNAS. The research results have been reported by multiple media outlets at home and abroad, such as The Times, Daily Mail, Reference News, People's Daily Online, etc. I taught MBA marketing management and customer analysis courses at Sungkyunkwan University (ranked first in MBA programs in South Korea) and won the Outstanding Teaching Award in 2021.
