市场营销系列学术讲座（第六十六讲）

演讲题目：Convenience vs. Pleasance: Two-Dimensional Matching and The Information Design on Peer-to-Peer Platforms

演讲嘉宾：杜金钊，香港大学市场营销系助理教授

演讲时间：2019年6月14日（周五）上午11：00-12:00

演讲地点：嘉二203室

主持人：高月涛助理教授

文章摘要：

We consider a two-sided decentralized matching scenario on a peer-to-peer platform. Each platform user on one side, called a ``sender'', sends an offer to one user on the other side, called a “receiver”. A match is successful if the offer is accepted. Individuals on both sides are differentiated in two dimensions: a vertical attribute, which reflects the individual's quality of being high (H) or low (L), and a horizontal location, which captures the extent of mismatch between a sender and a receiver. A platform user's utility from a successful match increases with the match's vertical quality but decreases with their horizontal distance. We first derive the equilibrium when the platform fully discloses user information across sides. Interestingly, even when senders' valuation for the horizontal closeness increases, an L-sender may instead choose a distant receiver to avoid competition. We then examine a platform's three possible information designs: withholding the senders' vertical information, withholding the receivers' vertical information, and centralized matching. Surprisingly, withholding one side’s vertical information not only always hurts the H-type users on both sides, but may also hurt the L-type users on the opposite side. The centralized matching scheme can benefit both types of users. Lastly, we compare the transaction volume under all matching schemes. Among the decentralized matching schemes, withholding receiver's vertical information results in the highest number of successful matches. Full information matching leads to the lowest number of transactions.

个人简介：

Jinzhao Du is an assistant professor of marketing at the University of Hong Kong. His research interests lie in the area of multi-sided markets, including media markets and matching markets. His work focuses on understanding the strategic interaction among the multiple players in media markets: content suppliers, advertisers, media platforms, news aggregators, and consumers. He also examines how a matching platform can improve matching efficiency through limiting the cross-side information exposure.