Resumen

CHEN, Li. A Quantitative Analysis on E-Books Sampling Optimization. J. theor. appl. electron. commer. res. [online]. 2017, vol.12, n.1, pp.68-76. ISSN 0718-1876.  http://dx.doi.org/10.4067/S0718-18762017000100006.

E-book sales have seen a slow growth in recent years. A major issue is how to attract consumers and promote sales. Motivated by the marketing strategy of free sampling, retailers start to offer free partial sampling of e-books. We propose a quantitative model for retailers to optimize the selection of e-books for sampling in their promotion campaign with a limited budget. Simulation-based numerical analysis shows that our model increases retailers’ profit by around 8% when the free partial sampling strategy can double the e-book demand. We also develop a dynamic programming model to help retailers better utilize a budget in relatively long period of time. An experiment analysis reflects an improvement of retailer’s profit of around 7%. Our model can be extended to other information goods such as digital music, video, and newspaper.

Palabras clave : E-book; Sampling; Information goods; Optimization; Dynamic programming.

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