考虑捆绑销售的在线课程免费试听策略研究

doi:10.16381/j.cnki.issn1003-207x.2022.2352

Abstract

Abstract:

Online courses have broken the limitations of time and space， providing a convenient tool for quality education and lifelong learning， which has led to the rapid development of online course platforms. However， it has also brought new management challenges. For example， when selling new course products， start-up online education platforms usually spend a lot of resources to provide consumers with a free trial of a certain length in order to reduce the uncertainty of the quality of the course. How to improve the effectiveness of this free trial strategy remains to be studied， especially when the platforms face different courses. Based on this， a game-theory model is built to characterize the relationship between consumers' uncertainty about the quality of online courses and the duration of free trials， and the optimal free trial strategy for a monopolistic online course platform that offers both premium and regular courses is analyzed， ultimately the mathematical formula is provided for the optimal free trial duration. Furthermore， the research problem is extended to bundled sales， analyzing the impact of bundled sales on the optimal free trial duration and pricing decision of the online course platform. It is shown that although free trials can alleviate consumers' uncertainty about course quality， when the quality difference between the two courses is large， the platform prefers to offer free trials only for premium courses rather than both types. In addition， compared with the non-bundled scenario， bundled sales benefit both the online course platform and consumers.

Key words: online courses, free trial, bundling, marketing strategy

CLC Number:

C931.2

Zhaofang Mao, Ruiying Yuan, Qingran Zhang. The Optimal Free Trial Strategy of the Online Course Platform Considering Bundling[J]. Chinese Journal of Management Science, 2025, 33(8): 238-249.

Figures/Tables 5

符号	含义
$i = N, F B, F H, F L$	上标，表示在线课程平台的策略集，不提供免费试听、提供两种课程免费试听、只提供精品课程免费试听、只提供普通课程免费试听
$j = h, l$	下标，表示精品课程、普通课程
*	上标，表示最优性
$α$	消费者对在线课程的质量不确定性系数/估值折扣系数， $α ∈ (0,1)$
$q j$	精品课程（ $j = h$ ）、普通课程（ $j = l$ ）的质量， $q h, q l ∈ (0,1)$ 且 $q h ≥ q l$
$θ j$	消费者对精品课程（ $j = h$ ）、普通课程（ $j = l$ ）的支付意愿
$T i$	$i$ 策略下在线课程平台提供的免费试听时长
$p j i$	$i$ 策略下在线课程平台对课程 $j$ 的定价
$u j i$	$i$ 策略下消费者购买课程 $j$ 的期望净效用
$π i$	$i$ 策略下在线课程平台的利润函数

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The Optimal Free Trial Strategy of the Online Course Platform Considering Bundling

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