商学大讲堂“系列要闻（第164讲）
讲座题目： Parallel Imports of Status Goods: A Strategic Analysis of Aesthetic Design
主讲嘉宾：张建强
讲座时间：2021年10月26日（星期二）9:00-11:00
讲座地点：商学院116东方厅
欢迎感兴趣的老师和同学参加！
商学院
2021年10月22日
主讲嘉宾简介
张建强，江苏师范大学教授，东南大学管理学博士，德克萨斯大学奥斯汀分校、印第安纳大学访问学者。研究方向主要为运营管理、营销科学、供应链管理等。曾获江苏省优秀博士学位论文，入选江苏高校“青蓝工程”优秀青年骨干教师。 在Management Science、Omega、European Journal of Operational Research、International Journal of Production Research、Annals of Operations Research、Journal of the Operational Research Society、International Journal of Research in Marketing、Quantitative Marketing and Economics、Marketing Letters、Information Economics and Policy等学术期刊上发表多篇论文，担任国际、国内权威期刊的审稿人和国家自然科学基金项目通讯评审专家。主持国家自然科学基金青年项目和面上项目、教育部人文社会科学项目等课题。
讲座主要内容
Parallel imports of gray products across markets are a worldwide concern for manufacturers. Extant research has focused on parallel imports of regular goods that do not provide status value. In this paper, we investigate the parallel imports of conspicuously consumed status goods. We consider a manufacturer that directly sells a status product to consumers in two markets that value the product differently and a gray marketer that can import the product across markets. Our analysis shows that, though parallel imports decrease a manufacturer's profit from selling regular goods, it can increase its profit from selling status goods. Furthermore, the manufacturer decides whether to use the same or different aesthetic design for products across markets. With the same design, the gray and manufacturer-authorized products look identical, while different designs make them distinguishable, which affects their status value. We find that parallel imports benefit the manufacturer in a broader range of situations under the different-design strategy, whereas the same-design strategy increases the gray marketer's profit. When the two markets are sufficiently similar, the manufacturer uses the same design to induce parallel imports. When the two markets are sufficiently different, the manufacturer uses different designs to either deter parallel imports or improve its profit while competing with the gray marketer.
