Abstract: Blind boxes refers to packages which randomly contain selected products of various styles, representing a novel and increasingly popular sales model characterized by uncertainty. In light of issues such as excessive consumption and waste driven by social comparison in current blind box sales, this paper incorporates consumer’s repurchase behavior into the analysis, and investigates the manufacturer’s joint decision-making problem regrading blind box design and inventory, specifically, how to determine the probability of rare (hidden) items and the corresponding inventory levels. Based on a utility function framework, the model characterizes consumer purchasing behavior and derives the relationship between the quantity of blind boxes purchased and the probability of obtaining hidden items. It is found that the expected purchase quantity does not always increase monotonically with the probability of receiving a hidden item. Based on this, the global optimization problem is equivalently transformed into several local optimization problems to obtain the manufacturer’s optimal joint decisions. It is concluded that although the blind box sales model is advantageous for manufacturers, it may harm consumer welfare.

Key words: blind box, repurchase behavior, probability of the hidden product, inventory decision

摘要： 盲盒是指随机装着不同款式产品的盒子，其随机性代表一种新的销售模式。针对当前盲盒销售中出现的过度消费和攀比浪费现象，本文将消费者的重复购买行为纳入分析范畴，研究厂商关于盲盒设计与库存的联合决策问题，即厂商应如何设计隐藏款产品的概率并决定盲盒库存。基于消费者的效用函数，刻画了消费者的购买行为，推导出消费者的盲盒购买数量与相应购买概率之间的关系。研究发现，盲盒期望购买量并非随隐藏款产品的概率单调变化。在此基础上，通过将全局优化问题等价转化为多个局部优化问题，得到了厂商的最优联合决策。研究指出，尽管盲盒销售模式对厂商有利，但可能会损害消费者的利益。

关键词: 盲盒, 重复购买行为, 隐藏款产品概率, 库存决策