2025年第105期(总第1146期)

演讲主题：On the Role of Sales Agent in Product Line Design

主讲人：付星宇 新南威尔士大学助理教授

主持人：关旭 供应链管理与系统工程系主任、教授

活动时间：2026年01月07日（周三）16:00-17:30

活动地址: 管院大楼205教室

主讲人简介：

付星宇现任新南威尔士大学（UNSW Sydney）商学院助理教授。他拥有香港科技大学博士学位。其研究兴趣包括社会责任与可持续运营、营销与运营的交叉领域，以及数据与人工智能的经济学。他的研究成果发表于Manufacturing & Service Operations Management、Naval Research Logistics和Service Science等期刊。

活动简介：

Firms often rely on commissioned sales agents to sell a product line, but these agents' incentives may not fully align with the firms'. We formalize this agency tension and show that it is first-order: with an uninformed agent who controls both pricing and persuasion, a two-version product line cannot be sustained in equilibrium. The agent's personal payoff biases effort and pricing toward the easy-to-sell, high-quality product, leading to product line collapse. Strikingly, even an infinitesimal sales delegation may trigger this collapse. We then propose three managerial remedies. First, empowering the agent with customer information can facilitate product line implementation, though incentive misalignment persists and the relaxed (first-best) outcome is not attained in general. Second, limiting the agent's pricing discretion restores managerial control and can sometimes sustain a product line. Third, offering product-specific commission rates --- penalizing sales of high-end products while rewarding those of low-end ones --- can induce product line implementation in equilibrium. Together, these results offer guidance for firm-salesforce coordination: firms should view information access, pricing authority, and commission structure as complementary levers to align selling incentives with product line strategy.