Platform Pricing Strategy And Coordination Mechanism Of Online Platform Retailers

Online retailing has been witnessing strong growth due to the rapid development of online platforms.In the B2 C online retail market,the platform scheme is a prominent feature of the development of the online retail industry.Under platform scheme,manufacturers can directly sell products to the end-consumers through the platforms of online retailers,but need to pay a commission fee for each transaction.The past research focuses on whether online retailers should introduce platform scheme.But in the practice of online retail market there are some other issues need be investigated.Such as how does online retailer choose platform scheme,what kinds of platform pricing strategy should be adopted by online retailers and how does online retailers coordinate multi-channel relationships under platform scheme.To address above issues,this dissertation uses the literature analysis,game theory and data simulation to investigate what kinds of platform scheme could be introduced by online retailers,what kinds of platform pricing strategy could be adopted by online retailers and what kinds of channel coordination mechanism could be used by online retailers to coordinate the channel under platform scheme.1)The dissertation considers a channel structure consists of one manufacturer and an online retailer.The online retailer cooperates with the manufacturer under the platform scheme.In addition to the vertical cooperation with the manufacturer,the platform-scheme retailer also cooperates with the manufacturer under the wholesale scheme.The dissertation investigates the influence of online retailer resells on the whole channel.The results show that retailer resells can produce positive spillover effect.It is more important that retailer resells will improve the profit of the entire supply chain and can achieve Pareto-improvment.2)This dissertation breaks the limitations of the single research structure and considers some other kinds of relationship between channel members in the channel structure.In addition to the vertical cooperation with the manufacturer,the platform-scheme retailer also shares the platform with the other retailer and forms horizontal cooperation.The dissertation analyses the value of horizontal cooperation in online retail channels.The horizontal cooperation can be established when the private market of the platform-scheme retailer is at an intermediate level.In addition,the value of horizontal cooperation on improving the performance of the entire supply chain could be enhanced under a more fierce competition market.3)This dissertation explores the platform pricing strategy of online platform retailer under the monopoly environment.Under the monopoly environment,in addition to the vertical cooperation with the manufacturer,the platform-scheme retailer also resells.The dissertation investigates the platform pricing strategy of online retailers under online retailer resells.The results show that the proportion fees could increase the demand of products and reduce the retail price made by the manufacturer.It also shows that the proportional fees will improve the profits of entire channel.4)The dissertation extends the platform pricing strategy of online platform retailers under competitive environment.This dissertation breaks the limitations of previous competition exclusivity,greatly enriched pricing strategy theory of platform.The dissertation analyses the results of proportional fee,per-transaction fee,two-part tariff and one online retailer adopts proportional fee and the other one adopts per-transaction fee in the presence of horizontal competition.The proportional fee is more efficient than per-transaction fee from the stand of online retailers and the whole chain and leads to a lower retail price;however,the manufacturer prefers to charge per-transaction fee.It is more important that under two-part tariff when lump-sum fees greater than a certain threshold and smaller than a certain threshold can achieve Pareto-improvment.Besides,this dissertation follows out applied investigations on the platform pricing strategy for online retailers in the presence of horizontal competition in China.5)Unlike the past research,this dissertation proposes a channel coordination mechanism from the perspective of online retailers to coordinate the channel under manufacturer-quality efforts,innovatively.The dissertation analyzes a quality effort cost-sharing contract to coordinate a decentralized channel supply chain to achieve beneficial outcomes for all parties.The quality effort cost-sharing contract could encourage the manufacturer to provide higher quality effort and increase sales of products.The quality effort cost-sharing contract could improve supply chain efficiency and total profits of entire channel.