Research On Channel Mode Choices And Optimal Decisions Of The E-tailer Based On Drop Shipping

With development of information technology and application of the Internet,e-commerce has become a new growth point of China's economy.As one of the new e-fulfillment options,Drop Shipping generates a certain challenge to the traditional channel mode,and the e-tailers also use hybrid channel mode with Drop Shipping and inventory system.Then every e-tailer faces the biggest problem: which should be choosing in three different channel modes? It is just the main concern of this dissertation and the contents are in the following:1.First this dissertation considers the optimal decisions of the e-tailer and the supplier on inventory level and channel mode choices in three different channel modes with demand uncertainty under single period,gets the analytical solutions of the optimal inventory levels and expected profits of the e-tailer and the supplier with general distribution demand.Through numerical experiments,the effects of Drop Shipping service cost,demand uncertainty and inventory operating cost level on the optimal inventory levels and expected profits of the e-tailer and the supplier are evaluated,and the optimal decisions on channel mode choices of the e-tailer,the supplier and the supply chain are examined in different scenarios.2.This dissertation studies the hybrid channel e-tailer who adopts the optimal threshold policy in e-fulfillment under multi-period uncertainty environment,designs a general framework to search the optimal threshold for the hybrid channel e-tailer,and implements the multi-period uncertainty environment with Matlab programming according to the analysis on the e-fulfillment process of the hybrid channel e-tailer under single period.Through Monte Carlo simulation,the influences of demand priority preference,demand uncertainty and lead time uncertainty on the hybrid channel e-tailer are examined,and the application value of the optimal threshold strategy is also evaluated.3.The unified process framework is designed according to the features of five different e-tailer models under single period,and then the multi-period environments of five different e-tailer models are also obtained with the extensions of the hybrid channel e-tailer model under multi-period uncertainty environment.The optimal choices of the e-tailer are examined in five different e-tailer models with the objective to maximize average profit under multi-period dynamic environments,the impacts of margin differences of priority and channel on the optimal choices are evaluated.And the positive values of the optimal threshold policy and hybrid channel mode for the e-tailer are also verified.4.Finally,considering the decision problems about whether to sell green product in the traditional e-tailer mode and Drop Shipping e-tailer mode,this dissertation gets the optimal decisions of the e-tailer and the supplier on the green degree,wholesale price and retail price based on analyzing their mathematical models,obtains the optimal decisions on the channel mode choices and product type based on the comparative analysis on the expected profits of the e-tailers and the suppliers in different models.The influences of some parameters on the profits and channel mode choices of the e-tailer and the supplier are also studied in numerical experiments.In addition,with the sharing of distribution cost and green innovation cost,different e-tailer models based on VMI are built,and the impacts of sharing ratio of distribution cost and green innovation cost on their expected profit are also examined.This dissertation analyzes the optimal decisions on channel mode choices and others in different situations,examines the positive effect and application value of Drop Shipping channel mode on the e-tailer,has some innovative,booms and expands the research on Drop Shipping,provides important practical value and guiding significance for the e-tailer and the supplier to make operational decisions.