Twenty-seventh international online seminar "Artificial Societies and Information Technologies"

On January 27, 2026, a meeting of the international online seminar "Artificial Societies and Information Technologies" was held, dedicated to the report of Teng Li (University of Groningen), Groningen, Netherlands.

Presentation topic: Consumer Heterogeneity and E-Market Concentration: An Agent-Based Approach

Brief annotation:

The phenomenon of high concentration in China's e-retail markets remains not fully understood. This study aims to explore its potential origins from the perspective of consumer types. By theoretically examining the impact of consumer type on market structure, this study assumes sellers to be homogeneous, while categorizing consumers based on two dimensions: risk-taking tendency (preference for new products over old ones) and pickiness tendency (likelihood to give negative rather than positive ratings). An agent-based simulation model is developed to examine the trends of market concentration ratios under diverse conditions. The simulation findings indicate that consumers' risk-taking tendency influences market concentration and volatility. Specifically, higher risk preference tends to reduce market concentration, making the market more volatile. Similarly, the higher the consumers' pickiness tendency, the more it hinders market concentration. In other words, when picky consumers dominate the market, higher sales, which means more negative ratings, can actually diminish the product's WoM and subsequently reduce the product's attractiveness. This prevents any product from maintaining a sales advantage, making it hard to achieve high market concentration. 

Video of this seminar on our YouTube channel