Analysis of Pinduoduo Social E-commerce Model

With the changes of the times, the internet is becoming increasingly important and mobile phones have become ubiquitous in people’s lives. More and more people are willing to purchase goods online, and e-commerce has entered a new and flourishing stage of development. A single e-commerce marketing model can no longer meet the needs of consumers, therefore, social e-commerce has emerged. The e-commerce industry in China has been developing for over a decade, with various stages gradually maturing and e-commerce constantly growing. At this time, Pinduoduo launched a unique marketing model that integrates social and e-commerce into consumer services. With its unique social e-commerce model, Pinduoduo has become a leader in the e-commerce industry in just three years and has opened up a new field for e-commerce with its unique social e-commerce marketing

Essays in Industrial Organization

Dans ma thèse, j'étudie trois questions importantes dans l'économie industrielle. Chapitre 1 étudie l'impact de l'intégration verticale sur l'innovation dans une industrie où les entreprises doivent entreprendre des R&D investissements risqués à des étapes de production et de distribution. L'intégration verticale permet une meilleure coordination au sein de l'entreprise intégrée, qui renforce son incitation à l'investissement aux niveaux amont et en aval. Cependant, ce n'est que bénéfique que pour les entreprises d'intégrer quand innovations à la fois en amont et en aval sont importantes. Quand l'innovation compte qu'à un seul niveau, les entreprises favorisent la séparation verticale. L'analyse donne un aperçu de la vague de fusions et R&D sous-traitance observées dans l'industrie pharmaceutique et d'autres industries verticale. Chapitre 2 étudie l'effet de la discrimination de la qualité sur la conception des produits. Dans le contexte de l'Internet, les fournisseurs de contenu sont l'objet de discrimination de la qualité des fournisseurs de services Internet. Nous montrons que les fournisseurs de contenu sont biaisées à choisir un design plus larges. Cela réduit la différenciation des produits sur le marché, et l'intervention est nécessaire pour atteindre l'efficacité dans le marché du contenu. Le résultat apporte un nouvel éclairage sur le débat sur la neutralité du net, qui impose l'égalité d'accès à tous les participants sur Internet. Chapitre 3 étudie le rôle de la publicité pour attirer et manipuler l'attention des consommateurs. Quand un produit est caractérisé par plusieurs attributs, les entreprises utilisent aussi stratégique annoncés de manipuler l'attention des consommateurs. Un monopole a tendance à annoncer trop peu d'attributs, et la concurrence n'améliore pas nécessairement la situation. En outre, dans une économie de l'attention-rares, la concurrence pour l'attention des consommateurs conduit les entreprises à annoncer moins d'attributs et réduit l'information à la disposition des consommateurs.In my thesis, I study three important issues in industrial organization. Chapter 1 studies the impact of vertical integration on innovation in an industry where firms need to undertake risky R&D investments at both production and distribution stages. Vertical integration brings better coordination within the integrated firm, which boosts its investment incentive at both upstream and downstream levels. However, it is only mutually beneficial for firms to integrate when both upstream and downstream innovations are important. When innovation only matters at one level, firms favour instead vertical separation. The analysis provides insights for the wave of mergers and R&D outsourcing observed in the pharmaceutical industry and other vertically related industries. Chapter 2 studies the effect of quality discrimination on product designs. In the context of Internet, content providers are subject to quality discrimination from the Internet Service Providers. We show that content providers are biased to choose broader designs. This reduces product differentiation in the market, and intervention is necessary to achieve efficiency in the content market. The result brings new insights into the discussion about net neutrality, which mandates equal access to every participant on the Internet. Chapter 3 studies the role of advertisements in attracting and manipulating attention from consumers. When a product is characterized by several attributes, firms also strategically use advertisements to manipulate the attention of consumers. A monopolist tends to advertise too few attributes, and competition does not necessarily improve the situation. Moreover, in an attention scarce economy, competition for consumers attention leads firms to advertise fewer attributes and reduces information available to consumers

Essays in Industrial Organization

Dans ma thèse, j'étudie trois questions importantes dans l'économie industrielle. Chapitre 1 étudie l'impact de l'intégration verticale sur l'innovation dans une industrie où les entreprises doivent entreprendre des R&D investissements risqués à des étapes de production et de distribution. L'intégration verticale permet une meilleure coordination au sein de l'entreprise intégrée, qui renforce son incitation à l'investissement aux niveaux amont et en aval. Cependant, ce n'est que bénéfique que pour les entreprises d'intégrer quand innovations à la fois en amont et en aval sont importantes. Quand l'innovation compte qu'à un seul niveau, les entreprises favorisent la séparation verticale. L'analyse donne un aperçu de la vague de fusions et R&D sous-traitance observées dans l'industrie pharmaceutique et d'autres industries verticale. Chapitre 2 étudie l'effet de la discrimination de la qualité sur la conception des produits. Dans le contexte de l'Internet, les fournisseurs de contenu sont l'objet de discrimination de la qualité des fournisseurs de services Internet. Nous montrons que les fournisseurs de contenu sont biaisées à choisir un design plus larges. Cela réduit la différenciation des produits sur le marché, et l'intervention est nécessaire pour atteindre l'efficacité dans le marché du contenu. Le résultat apporte un nouvel éclairage sur le débat sur la neutralité du net, qui impose l'égalité d'accès à tous les participants sur Internet. Chapitre 3 étudie le rôle de la publicité pour attirer et manipuler l'attention des consommateurs. Quand un produit est caractérisé par plusieurs attributs, les entreprises utilisent aussi stratégique annoncés de manipuler l'attention des consommateurs. Un monopole a tendance à annoncer trop peu d'attributs, et la concurrence n'améliore pas nécessairement la situation. En outre, dans une économie de l'attention-rares, la concurrence pour l'attention des consommateurs conduit les entreprises à annoncer moins d'attributs et réduit l'information à la disposition des consommateurs.In my thesis, I study three important issues in industrial organization. Chapter 1 studies the impact of vertical integration on innovation in an industry where firms need to undertake risky R&D investments at both production and distribution stages. Vertical integration brings better coordination within the integrated firm, which boosts its investment incentive at both upstream and downstream levels. However, it is only mutually beneficial for firms to integrate when both upstream and downstream innovations are important. When innovation only matters at one level, firms favour instead vertical separation. The analysis provides insights for the wave of mergers and R&D outsourcing observed in the pharmaceutical industry and other vertically related industries. Chapter 2 studies the effect of quality discrimination on product designs. In the context of Internet, content providers are subject to quality discrimination from the Internet Service Providers. We show that content providers are biased to choose broader designs. This reduces product differentiation in the market, and intervention is necessary to achieve efficiency in the content market. The result brings new insights into the discussion about net neutrality, which mandates equal access to every participant on the Internet. Chapter 3 studies the role of advertisements in attracting and manipulating attention from consumers. When a product is characterized by several attributes, firms also strategically use advertisements to manipulate the attention of consumers. A monopolist tends to advertise too few attributes, and competition does not necessarily improve the situation. Moreover, in an attention scarce economy, competition for consumers attention leads firms to advertise fewer attributes and reduces information available to consumers

Tensor Decomposition for Model Reduction in Neural Networks: A Review

Modern neural networks have revolutionized the fields of computer vision (CV) and Natural Language Processing (NLP). They are widely used for solving complex CV tasks and NLP tasks such as image classification, image generation, and machine translation. Most state-of-the-art neural networks are over-parameterized and require a high computational cost. One straightforward solution is to replace the layers of the networks with their low-rank tensor approximations using different tensor decomposition methods. This paper reviews six tensor decomposition methods and illustrates their ability to compress model parameters of convolutional neural networks (CNNs), recurrent neural networks (RNNs) and Transformers. The accuracy of some compressed models can be higher than the original versions. Evaluations indicate that tensor decompositions can achieve significant reductions in model size, run-time and energy consumption, and are well suited for implementing neural networks on edge devices.Comment: IEEE Circuits and Systems Magazine, 202

De-targeting to signal quality

It is important for firms to signal the high quality of their products to consumers in experience goods markets. Conventional wisdom suggests that a high price can be a signal of high quality. However, we argue that the role of price in signaling quality could be weakened when firms resort to the intensive use of targeting in advertising, which could attenuate the informational content of a high price. As a consequence, a high quality firm needs to distort its price more to signal its quality. However, when different levels of targeting are available, a high quality firm may find it optimal to signal its quality with a lower level of targeting

Dancing with Rivals: How does Platform’s Information Usage Benefit Independent Sellers?

Platforms greatly facilitate transactions between buyers and sellers. At the same time, this allows platforms to gather detailed information on transactions and tailor their strategies when introducing their own products that compete with independent sellers. Concerns have been raised that such an information advantage of the platforms can hurt sellers. To investigate the impact of information usage by platforms, we analyze a dynamic game-theoretic model where competing sellers trade via a platform that has access to information at various levels of granularity. We show that the usage of more detailed and individualized information by the platform can actually benefit sellers. This occurs as sellers compete less intensely, anticipating that the platform would take advantage of more individualized information to target the more successful sellers. The competition relaxing effect is particularly strong when sellers are close substitutes and face little demand uncertainty within their product category. In such cases, both the platform and sellers could benefit from more individualized information usage, but consumers may be hurt

Multiple Near-Isogenic Lines Targeting a QTL Hotspot of Drought Tolerance Showed Contrasting Performance Under Post-anthesis Water Stress

The complex quantitative nature of drought-related traits is a major constraint to breed tolerant wheat varieties. Pairs of near-isogenic lines (NILs) with a common genetic background but differing in a particular locus could turn quantitative traits into a Mendelian factor facilitating our understanding of genotype and phenotype interactions. In this study, we report our fast track development and evaluation of NILs from C306 × Dharwar Dry targeting a wheat 4BS QTL hotspot in C306, which confers drought tolerance following the heterogeneous inbreed family (HIF) analysis coupled with immature embryo culture-based fast generation technique. Molecular marker screening and phenotyping for grain yield and related traits under post-anthesis water stress (WS) confirmed four isoline pairs, viz., qDSI.4B.1-2, qDSI.4B.1-3, qDSI.4B.1-6, and qDSI.4B.1-8. There were significant contrasts of responses between the NILs with C306 QTL (+NILs) and the NILs without C306 QTL (−NILs). Among the four confirmed NIL pairs, mean grain yield per plant of the +NILs and −NILs showed significant differences ranging from 9.61 to 10.81 and 6.30 to 7.56 g, respectively, under WS condition, whereas a similar grain yield was recorded between the +NILs and −NILs under well-watered condition. Isolines of +NIL and −NIL pairs showed similar chlorophyll content (SPAD), assimilation rate (A), and transpiration rate (Tr) at the beginning of the stress. However, the +NILs showed significantly higher SPAD (12%), A (66%), stomatal conductance (75%), and Tr (97%) than the −NILs at the seventh day of stress. Quantitative RT-PCR analysis targeting the MYB transcription factor gene Triticum aestivum MYB 82 (TaMYB82), within this genomic region which was retrieved from the wheat reference genome TGACv1, also revealed differential expression in +NILs and –NILs under stress. These results confirmed that the NILs can be invaluable resources for fine mapping of this QTL, and also for cloning and functional characterization of the gene(s) responsible for drought tolerance in wheat