Two-period pricing of an e-tailer: Is using a top influencer to promote new products a bane or a boon?

With the development of live-streaming sales, using top influencers to promote new products has become one of the mainstream marketing models of e-tailers. The cooperation between the e-tailer and the top influencer is often short-term, during which the top influencer charges a unit commission and a fixed link fee to the e-tailer. Based on this, we consider two top influencer usage strategies, i.e., using or not using a top influencer, of the etailer and construct a two-period model to explore the two-period pricing strategies of the e-tailer. We find that the e-tailer should lower (increase) the second-period price if the strength of the network effect is low (high) and set the same price during the two periods otherwise. The fixed link fee is a key factor that hinders the e-tailer from using the top influencer. Furthermore, consumer surplus and social welfare increase as the influence of the top influencer grows.