英文摘要 |
This paper examines how the availability of the Internet channel may affect the performances of industries of digital goods (such as compact discs, electronic games, and computer software). Many of these digital goods are experience goods, of which consumers learn the product quality only after using them. In the absence of the Internet, firms may find it prohibitively costly to reveal the quality of their products (e.g., providing trial devices), and consequently consumers cannot judge the quality of products and firms do not have incentives to provide high-quality products. The Internet allows firms to reveal the quality of digital goods efficiently, thus encouraging firms to increase the quality levels of their products. In a market consisting of the segment of quality-concerned consumers and that of price-concerned consumers, we show that with the Internet, (i) the quality of a digital good tends to be higher; (ii) firms can use different types of outlets to achieve better screening and tend to adjust their targeting strategies; in particular, a high-quality firm may serve all internet users on the net and quality-concerned consumers at traditional outlets, thus leading the price on the net to be lower than that at the traditional outlet.; (iii) a high-quality firm can signal its quality to consumers by committing to use the Internet outlets only; and (iv) a more diffuse competitive structure will prevail in equilibrium. |