A Study On Consumer Information-based Free Riding Problem Under Dual-channel Environment

After years of high-speed growth, China's e-commerce has entered into the stage of the large scale development and application. As the number of e-commerce users increased significantly, and has achieved significant scale, many enterprises in consolidating the traditional channels at the same time, have begun to use new business model to change the traditional channel structure. The successful operation of many systems fully illustrates this channel structure combining the traditional channel and electronic channel, namely dual-channel is challenging, also be very promising channel mode of the supply chain. However, when the traditional channel and electronic channel coexist, consumers'free-riding behavior based on the product information service is hard to be avoided.This dissertation studies the information free-riding problem in a dual-channel with some innovative and basic perspectives, including the channel conflict and coordination caused by consumers'free-riding behavior, the impact of free-riding phenomenon on the information service provided by traditional retailers, the equilibrium analysis and empirical research of the free-riding behavior and information search cost reduction, the dynamic factors of free-riding behavior and countermeasures based on returns policy. Details are as follows:(1) Respectively in single channel and dual-channel environment, this dissertation analyzes the equilibrium profit of the manufacturer, traditional retailer, electronic store and the whole supply chain, and the supply chain parties pricing strategy are given. Aiming at the impact of information free-riding phenomenon on the profit of the manufacturer, traditional retailer, electronic store and the whole supply chain, this dissertation presents coordination strategy based on the uniform product pricing. The consumers'confusion feeling caused by price differences between different channels and which produces information free-riding behavior can be eliminated in a certain degree through this strategy, at the same time, between the traditional retailer and electronic store is no longer malignant price war, but benign competition based on the product information service. (2) We construct respectively three-stage game models when information free-riding phenomenon exists in the market and there is no free-riding, and based on the three-stage game models, we analyzes the consumers'purchasing behavior and pricing behavior of the traditional retailer and electronic store. We reconstructed the consumers'purchasing decision model. From four aspects of product strategy, pricing strategy, returns policy based on market partition and drop-shipping strategy, the preventive measures of free riding are discussed preliminarily.(3) We conduct equilibrium analysis of the free-riding behavior and information search cost reduction in the dual-channel environment, and the relationship between the two are analyzed theoretically. The impact of search cost reduction on the price competition between sellers and the enthusiasm of free product information service provided by sellers is analyzed from microscopic view, at the same time, the indirect impact of search cost reduction on social welfare. We find that "non-free riders" can not resolve the matching problem of the product and actual demand through information service when the probability of free product information service provided by traditional retailers declines. In this case, the surplus of "non-free rider" type of consumers decreases, resulting in the overall social welfare decline.(4) Using the method of qualitative depth interview and literature retrieval, we preliminarily define the four factors influencing the consumer perception of reduced search cost:search convenience, seller's efforts, personal product knowledge, channel diversification. Based on the construction of research model, the relationship between the consumer perception of reduced search cost and its antecedent, consequence variables is studied. The empirical results confirm that search convenience, seller's efforts, personal product knowledge, channel diversification have positive impact on the consumer perception of reduced search cost, at the same time, search convenience, channel diversification and information search cost reduction can facilitate consumers'free-riding behavior.(5) From the perspective of consumption environment, consumer behavior and technical limitations, the dynamic factors of free riding are analyzed. We mainly discuss the negative impact of free-riding behavior and present returns policy based on market partition. We respectively establish the supply chain models of the single-channel and dual-channel, and based on the models, we compare the expected profits of traditional retailer, manufacturer and supply chain system in the single-channel and dual-channel environment. We find that the returns policy based on market partition can effectively prevent the free-riding behavior, and the overall sales of the supply chain increase due to the expansion of sales coverage.