How Strategic Consumers Shape Blockchain Adoption Considering Consumer Privacy Concern

Firms often sell products over multiple periods, while consumers may strategically choose when to make a purchase. However, existing research on blockchain adoption largely examines firms’ adoption decisions in single-period settings, leaving the role of strategic consumers in multi-period markets unclear. This study examines how strategic consumer behavior shapes the manufacturer’s blockchain adoption decision. We show that blockchain adoption changes how the manufacturer manages intertemporal prices and demand. Although blockchain increases consumers’ valuation in both periods, the resulting increase in valuation is discounted over time, whereas consumer privacy concern persists across periods. Thus, the manufacturer cannot effectively recover the value of information transparency promotion by raising the period-2 price and instead lowers the period-1 price more than the period-2 price as consumer privacy concern increases. This asymmetric pricing induces more strategic consumers to purchase in period 1. Therefore, when consumer privacy concern is moderate, greater consumer patience can increase profit under blockchain adoption while reducing profit without blockchain adoption. However, when consumer privacy concern is high, greater consumer patience always reduces the manufacturer’s profit because high consumer privacy concern severely limits the manufacturer’s ability to raise the period-2 price. More importantly, strategic consumers do not necessarily hinder blockchain adoption. A larger fraction of strategic consumers and consumer patience may strengthen the adoption incentive under certain conditions.