At 2 pm on February 22, 2019, Dr. Zhai Zelong, Assistant Professor of the School of Economics of Shenzhen University, was invited to give an academic report entitled “Digital Product Piracy and Quality Information Disclosure” in Room 317 of the main building.
The report is based on the recent research results of Professor Zhai Zelong: explore how a company that sells newly developed digital products is affected by piracy in terms of pricing, quality disclosure strategies, and profitability. The study assumes that the quality information of the product is unknown to potential customers. Companies can choose to disclose quality information at non-zero fixed costs to address the quality uncertainty consumers face. The study found that in a balanced situation, when the true product quality is not so high that the company chooses not to disclose quality information, the company's profits may be strictly reduced as the difficulty or cost of piracy increases. This is because as piracy costs increase, companies have more incentives to disclose quality. Therefore, rational customers have lower beliefs about the quality of non-disclosured products, which leads to lower profits for the company. Professor Zhai Zelong’s report is very simple and has received the attention of the audience. Participants and Professor Zhai Zelong exchanged and discussed relevant issues. After the report, Professor Zhai Zelong took a group photo with the teachers and students of our school.
Dr. Zhai Zelong is an assistant professor in the Department of Transportation Economics and Logistics Management of the School of Economics of Shenzhen University. He received his Ph.D. in the management from the Business School of the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology. He is mainly engaged in consumer behavior, supply chain management, and information economics research. He has published papers in journals such as Production and Operations Management, Decision Sciences, OMEGA, Information and Management, and has hosted research projects such as the National Natural Science Foundation of China and the Natural Science Foundation of Guangdong Province. He has served an anonymous reviewer for journals such as Manufacturing & Service Operations Management, Production and Operations Management, OMEGA, and the International Journal of Production Economics.
