The Bright Side of Marketing-Finance Divisional Conflicts
Guest Speaker: Prof. Yunchuan (Frank) Liu (Gies College of Business, UIUC)
Time/Date: 9:00~10:30 Mon. 10th, May 2021 (Beijing Time)
Meeting ID: 666 350 51699
Password: 973990
Click Link: https://zoom.com.cn/j/66635051699
ABSTRACT
In this paper, we study the implications of firms’ divisional conflicts between marketing divisions and consumer finance divisions when firms both sell their products and provide financing to consumers, in monopoly and duopoly markets. We design a game-theoretical model to study the interdependence and conflicts between a sales division and a consumer finance division within a firm. The sales division decides the product price to maximize sales profits and relies on the consumer finance division to provide financing to consumers, while the consumer finance division decides whether to finance consumers’ purchase to maximize interest profits and limit consumer default loss which are affected by the sales price of the sales division. We model two firms with internal sales-finance conflicts and study how intrafirm sales-finance conflicts affect the interfirm competition on both pricing and consumer financing. While conventional wisdom suggests that a centralized firm where the sales and consumer finance divisions are integrated would benefit the firm, we show that in a competitive market, a decentralized firm where the sales and consumer finance divisions make price and financing decisions separately can benefit from the conflicts between the sales and consumer finance divisions and gain more profits than a centralized firm. Moreover, strikingly, competition can benefit a firm, i.e., a firm with the internal conflicts between its sales and consumer finance divisions can earn a higher profit with another competing firm in the market than without. We also show that the conflicts between a sales division and a consumer finance division of a firm can affect consumer welfare through pricing and consumer financing, and the seemingly dysfunctional and uncoordinated conflicts between the sales and consumer financing divisions of a firm can actually benefit consumers.
GUEST BIO
刘云川是美国伊利诺伊大学香槟分校商学院(UIUC)副教授,终身教职,毕业于美国哥伦比亚大学,获市场营销学博士学位。刘教授是美国华人知名营销学者,是零售业,流通渠道,产品策略,国际营销、和定价策略方面的专家,他有很多文章发表在Marketing Science 和Management Science上。现任Decision Science期刊副主编, 多次获得Marketing Science、Management Science的优秀评审奖。