Abstract:

The improvement of the product comment module in the e-commerce platform helps thetwo-stagesalesproducts to be comprehensively perceived by consumers in the second stage，a manufacturer who wants to attract more new consumers while maintaining original consumer needs to implement a marketing campaign to improve its competitiveness.As a common marketing campaign for new products or replacement products， whether new customer coupons can effectively improve the market share and profits of manufacturers under the background that consumers increasingly pay attention to online commentsand the transparency of product quality has been improved， and what impact it has on manufacturers' decision-making， market competition and consumer surplus will be the focus of this paper.Consider that two competitive manufacturers M₁ and M₂ launch product 1 and product 2 respectively， their sell products in two stages simultaneously on the e-commerce platform. In the first stage， both manufacturers sell original products. In the second stage， one manufacturer will improve the quality of productaccording to online comments， and two manufacturers will decide whether to provide new customer coupons.It is assumed that consumers' valuation of product quality consists of objective quality and experience quality. At the end of the first stage， consumers who buy products will evaluate the quality of product experience according to their own utility function.At the beginning of the second stage， consumers know the experience quality of products they have purchased， and for products that have not been purchased， they will estimate the experience quality based on online comments. When the manufacturer provides new customer coupons， consumers who have not purchased his products in the first stage will get price concessions. Then， consumers make purchase decisions according to their expected utility function.The two manufacturers make corresponding decisions in the two ways of exogenous and endogenous product quality improvement levels by constructing profit function model， andanalyzing the change rules of decision variables and profits of two manufacturers under different new customer coupons strategies.Relevant conclusions and numerical analysis results show that when the proportion of informed consumers is relatively high， the demand and price of products in the second stage will decrease with the increase of consumers' preference for positive comments.The improvement of consumers' preference for positive comments will increase consumers' surplus.When the price sensitivity coefficient of consumers is lowand the manufacturer provides new customer coupons alone， the price of products will always be higher than that in other cases. When the price sensitivity coefficient of consumers is high and the quality improvement level is endogenous， the profit change of the manufacturer who does not improve the product is affected by the quality improvement cost coefficient of the manufacturer who improves product. The relationship between the amount of new customer coupons of the two manufacturers will affect the change in their profit advantage.In addition， the impact of new customer coupons on consumer surplus is also considered. The research conclusions provide some reference for the merchants who plan to provide new customer coupons.

Key words: online reviews, quality improvement, new customer coupons, price sensitivity coefficient