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We model the interaction between a profit-maximizing firm and an activist using an infinite-horizon dynamic stochastic game. The firm enhances its reputation through “self-regulation”: voluntary provision of an abatement activity that reduces a negative externality. We show that in equilibrium the externality-reducing activity is subject to decreasing marginal returns, which can cause the firm to “coast on its reputation,” that is, decrease the level of externality-reducing activity as its reputation grows. The activist, which benefits from increases in the externality-reducing activity, can take two types of action that can harm the firm’s reputation: criticism, which can impair the firm’s reputation on the margin, and confrontation, which can trigger a crisis that may severely damage the firm’s reputation. The activist changes the reputational dynamics of the game by tending to keep the firm in reputational states in which it is highly motivated to invest in externality-reducing activity. Criticism and confrontational activity are shown to be imperfect substitutes. The more patient the activist or the more passionate it is about externality reduction, the more likely it is to rely on confrontation. The more patient the firm and the more important corporate citizenship is to firm’s brand equity, the more likely that it will be targeted by an activist that relies on confrontation.

For two-sided platforms, the utility of users on one side of the platform depends in part on the number of users on the other side of the platform, a phenomenon called indirect network externalities. With the rapid development of two-sided platform and the popularity of platform membership, more and more two-sided platforms have launched joint membership through horizontal cooperation in order to take advantage of indirect network externalities to increase platform profits.

Our study explores the optimal bundling strategy for platform memberships under horizontal cooperation considering indirect network externalities. The main purpose of our study is to obtain the optimal pricing under different strategies (pure component, pure bundling, and mixed bundling) and contrast different strategies under different indirect network externalities.

Results suggest that the platform's optimal pricing for consumers and sellers depends on the indirect network externalities. Interestingly, the higher the indirect network externalities from consumers, the higher the price of the platform charges to sellers, and the platform might even subsidize sellers. Besides, when there are equal proportions of different types of consumers in the market, indirect network externalities that are too high, too low, or heavily lopsided may discourage the platforms from bundling their memberships. When the composition of consumers changes, the optimal strategy will also change. Our results can be employed in practical applications of bundling, which can help the platform increase profits.

Considering the network externalities of online selling, this paper builds three different online direct selling models: manufacturer direct selling (MN model), network platform direct selling (NN model) and retailer direct selling (RN model). The optimal advertising and pricing decision and corporate profits under each selling model are investigated.

Combining the characteristics of online direct selling, this paper formulates direct selling models that are dominated by different companies as Stackelberg game models. Numerical analyses are carried out, along with the comparison of the equilibrium solutions for each model.

The authors' research shows that increasing network externalities is conducive to the development of enterprises. The network platform's profit is the lowest in the RN model and the highest in the NN one. The comparison of manufacturers' profits between the MN model and the NN model primarily depends on consumers' sensitivities for sales price and advertising promotion level. The manufacturer does not benefit from the RN model due to the lowest efficiency.

Coupled with three different online direct selling models and detailed analyses of the optimal solutions, this study has enriched the theoretical foundation of online direct selling. Moreover, this study extends the research of network externalities to the field of e-commerce, revealing the network externalities' influence on the decision-making of the e-supply chain.

By building and examining an integral model, the principal objectives of this research are to systematically explore how indirect and direct network externalities lead to user loyalty toward WeChat through the mediating effect of perceived gratifications.

The data were collected through an online survey of 688 young people in Mainland China. To empirically assess the conceptual model, zero-order correlation analyses and structural equation modeling were carried out utilizing web-based data.

Path analysis results demonstrate that indirect network externalities and direct network externalities exert a significant impact on users' hedonic gratifications and utilitarian gratifications. Moreover, the study discovers the significant mediating influences of utilitarian gratifications on the association between indirect network externalities and user loyalty.

Theoretically, this article may extend the scope of diverse studies on the association between network externalities and perceived gratifications and offer fresh insights into how mobile social media could actually improve user loyalty through enhancing perceived values among younger generation. Practically, this research assists mobile social media practitioners in retaining users and gaining competitive advantages over rival applications.

Although the extraordinary growth of WeChat has successfully become the dominant media by which individuals develop interpersonal network and contact with others, the roles of perceived gratifications between network externalities and user loyalty toward WeChat have not yet been investigated in depth. These obtained outcomes not only enrich the existing literature regarding the relationship between network externalities and affective response, but also offer fresh insights to mobile social media designers, marketers and users.

The purpose of this paper is to model the role that stakeholders, and especially social responsible consumers play in the process of finding a win–win solution to control production related negative externalities. In this regard, when information asymmetries are present and consumers become knowledgeable about them, consumers with d-preferences for corporate social responsibility (CSR) type of products becomes the driver of the firm strategy.

To accomplish the goals of this paper, the authors proceed to develop a series of theoretical models wherein the social gains and costs of alternative modes of intervention are illustrated. The authors begin with a standard Pigouvian tax model and construct a stakeholder equivalent tax model and finalize the analysis with consumers acting in a shared social responsible behavior with firms as the optimal solution model.

The authors show that proactive disclosure of information asymmetries regarding negative externalities develops a shared social responsibility between consumers and firms. Market-based solutions to the externality problem are achieved under this setting. This solution is preferred to a Pigouvian tax and to a stakeholder equivalent tax. It is concluded that shared social responsibility is the result of the interaction of consumers with d-preferences and the reaction of a socially responsible “firm” willing, and the authors are able to incorporate these preferences as drivers for its strategy.

The main limitation of this paper is in its theoretical nature and specific applications to one case, that of negative externalities in production processes. The implication of this is that the model herein developed needs to be put to the empirical test.

The overall social implications indicate that active reduction of information asymmetries is welfare improving and preferred to government intervention.

This paper is original as it makes use of economic principles to develop a parsimonious model to demonstrate that proactive actions of a firm in response to consumers and stakeholders demands leads to an overall social welfare improvement when negative externalities deriving from production are incorporated into the decision making process of both consumers and firms. These decisions prove superior to government regulations.

Given a product or service, the number of its installed user base has a significant positive effect on the existing users’ loyalty and new users’ conversion. This effect is conceptualized as network externalities in economics. Network externalities are supposed to be particularly striking in nowadays online business-to-business (B2B) platforms, but yet the mystery behind their effects on user loyalty to online B2B platforms remains to be delicately unraveled. The purpose of this paper is to discover the factors driving users’ loyalty, especially buyers’ loyalty, to online B2B platforms, by highlighting the impacts of network externalities on loyalty and other mediating factors.

A conceptual model of buyer loyalty under network externalities is elaborated. The reliability and validity of the instruments of the latent model constructs are assessed by confirmatory factor analysis, and the hypothesized causal relationships among the constructs are tested by structural equation modeling, on 710 valid buyer samples collected from a famous online B2B platform in China.

The analysis demonstrates that: perceived value, user satisfaction and switching costs are the major predictors of buyer loyalty to online B2B platforms characterized by network externalities; network externalities positively account for buyer loyalty by contributing to perceived value, user satisfaction and switching costs; and direct network externality (measured by perceived network size and perceived external prestige) has a significant effect on indirect network externality (measured by perceived compatibility and perceived complementarity).

The findings allow the authors to conclude meaningful managerial implications for online B2B service providers to build up loyal user bases through improving users’ perceptions of network externalities, switching costs and value.

This paper’s main objective is to expand the demand-driven strategic field by developing a model where endogenization of consumers’ preferences for clean(er) products becomes the driver of the firm green corporate social responsible (GCSR) profit maximization behavior.

The model proposes that in undifferentiated markets, firms using a conventional technology manage production-related negative externalities via information asymmetries. In turn, when consumer socially responsible individuals (CnSR) discover the nature of the information asymmetries, they then reveal their preferences. The building block of the model is that CnSR derive value both from intrinsic as well as extrinsic product features, and derive negative satisfaction from the production negative externalities. In turn, CnSR preferences offer a higher willingness to pay for a combined intrinsic (private good and direct utility) and extrinsic (public good and feel good–do good utility) product.

The model demonstrates that the firm’s GCSR behavior is a technological-driven process directly affecting the extrinsic component of the product through the development of a safe technology, and exclusively targeting CnSR type of consumers. The corollary of the model is that for the firm pursuing a GCSR behavior, the development of a competitive advantage with higher firm performance leads to profit maximization when exclusively serving the GCSR segment of the market. Thus, GCSR is the result of unusual innovation efforts.

This paper presents a model that expands the field of strategic management through the demand-driven incorporation and respective modeling. To the best of the author’s knowledge, this is the first model to explicitly develop this relationship in this format.

This paper aims to clarify the complex path of negative externalities in the sharing economy and proposes corresponding policy recommendations.

This paper aims to establish an analytical framework for the negative externalities of the sharing economy and to extract the main factors that produce negative externalities, and then, through qualitative comparative analysis method find out how these factors interact to form a negative externality.

Negative externalities in the sharing economy come from the joint effect of the sharing degree of the product or service and constraint mechanism, and the current main modes of the shared economy increase the possibility of negative externalities.

The paper proposes a complex path resulting from negative externalities in the shared economy.