管理科学系学术讲座

时间：2024年6月17日（周一） 13:30-15:00

地点：管理学院思源楼524室

主题：The Service of Buy Now, Pay Later

主讲人：Bobby Zhou（周勃）马里兰大学史密斯商学院副教授

主持人：田林复旦大学管理学院教授

摘要：Firms are increasingly adopting buy-now-pay-later (BNPL) services to facilitate consumers’ purchase decisions. Unlike credit cards that require full payment in the next period, BNPL allows multiple payments in equal installments. This paper investigates the impact of BNPL services on firms’ profits and consumer surplus. We consider a two-period model where the seller optimally decides on the retail price, a lender sets the interest rate, and consumers with heterogeneous incomes decide how to make the purchase. First, we find that BNPL enables firms to engage in both price discrimination and reverse price discrimination. In particular, high-income consumers end up paying a higher effective price than lower-income consumers with BNPL who default later, but lower than that paid by lower-income consumers with BNPL who make the full payment. Second, the introduction of BNPL leads to a higher price and thus can drive out consumers who need the service more. Third, compared to its absence, BNPL can lead to lower consumer surplus, whereas credit card usage typically improves consumer surplus. Lastly, we consider the revenue-sharing contract between the seller and the lender. We show that the seller can be worse off from a higher revenue-sharing rate for herself.

个人简介：Bobby Zhou is an Associate Professor of Marketing and Emerging Fellow at Smith from Robert H. Smith School of Business, University of Maryland. He received his Ph.D. in Marketing from the Fuqua School of Business at Duke University in 2014, his MA in Economics from the University of Southern California in 2009, and his BA in Finance from Tsinghua University in 2006. His research focuses on competitive marketing strategies, in particular, pricing and promotion. He uses both analytical models as well as experimental approaches in his research. His work has been published in the Journal of Marketing Research, Marketing Science, and Management Science. He was selected as Marketing Science Institute (MSI) Young Scholar in 2019. He is a multiple-time-winner of the Distinguished Teaching Award and the Allen Krowe for Teaching Excellence at the University of Maryland. He has also been the recipient of the Distinguished Service Awards for Management Science and Marketing Science for his reviewing services. He currently serves as an AE for Journal of Retailing, and serves on the editorial board of Decision Science, International Journal of Research in Marketing, Journal of Interactive Marketing, Journal of Marketing Research, and Marketing Science.