Bundle Pricing And On-demand Logistics Decision Of Pharmaceutical Products Under O2O Mode

The increasing medical expenses and the scarce medical resources have become a global issue.People are still faced with a serious problem of expensive medical treatment.Although the higher treatment fee in the medical industry,the net profits remain low.Online medical care which is considered as an emerging medical service platform provides a new solution approach for “difficult to see a doctor” and “expensive medical treatment” due to its transparent and comprehensive information acquisition methods.In order to make a deep understanding of the operation and management in the medical e-commerce platform,this dissertation studies the three different decision-making problems with respect to medical platform operation,product pricing and distribution pricing under the O2 O mode.From the detailed analysis,this dissertation has drawn some inspiring conclusions and management inspirations.On the one hand,this dissertation enriches the research of O2 O medical e-commerce and real-time distribution,on the other hand,it provides some guidences for the actual strategy and decision-making of O2 O medical e-commerce.Firstly,based on the background of the drug network,this dissertation studies the online medical platform’s optimal service investment and drug pricing decisions,and the doctor’s optimal occupancy fee method.The study found that regardless of the patients’ market size,fixed pricing strategy is always better than linear pricing strategy from the perspective of medical platforms.The platform’s optimal profit under the linear pricing scheme will be the same as the fixed pricing scheme if and only if the commission fee charged by the platform is a certain value.When the patient’s initial perceived utility is small than the patient’s market size,the platform charges a lower occupancy fee or grants a subsidy to the doctor.When the patient’s initial perceived utility is larger than the patient’s market size,the occupancy fee charged by the platform is not only related to the doctors’ number,the diagnostic fee,and the doctors’ opportunity cost,but also affected by the patients’ market size.In addition,if the patient has a pessimistic attitude toward the online medical platform,the platform must guarantee the doctor can derive positive profit.Therefore,when deciding on service investment and drug prices,the platform needs to consider the relationship between the patient’s initial perceived utility and the market size of the patient,the number of doctors in the platform,the doctor’s fee for diagnosis,the marginal cost of service investment,the service level,and the doctor’s opportunity cost.Secondly,this dissertation provides a new approach for online pharmacies to offer interactive bundle pricing which allows customers to bundle any drug and provides real-time pricing services to maximize online pharmacy profits and consumer surplus.The consumer budget,free shipping policy and free diagnostics policy are incorporated into the proposed nonlinear programming model,and a heuristic algorithm is designed to solve this interactive bundled pricing problem.The specific numerical analysis was carried out by taking the data of Company A as an example.The study found that the IBPS strategy outperformed the benchmark strategy in terms of online pharmacies’ profits,consumer surplus and number of consumers.The IBPS strategy can leverage the bundling strategy to attract customers while increasing total sales by reducing unit product profitability.Compared with the benchmark strategy,the IBPS strategy contributes more to the consumer surplus than to the electronic pharmacy profit.In addition,the impact of consumer budgets,cost ratios,transportation costs,diagnostic-free thresholds,and free shipping thresholds on online pharmacy profits,consumer surplus,and consumer numbers were also analyzed.It was found that IBPS is particularly effective in increasing the profit and consumer surplus of electronic pharmacies when the consumer’s budget is tight,or the cost ratio is low,or the shipping cost is moderate,or the free diagnostic fee threshold is low compared to the benchmark strategy.Then,based on the supply chain model framework,the optimal distribution pricing and retailer inventory strategy of the platform under the on-demand logistics mode are studied.Considering Stackelberg game system which consisting of a leading pharmaceutical e-commerce platform and two following drug retailers,the author solves the medical platform’s optimal service pricing and the pharmaceutical retailers’ optimal inventory level according to the chain rule.The study found that,given the pharmaceutical platform ‘s on-demand logistics price,the retailers’ optimal inventory level is derived under the on-demand logistics mode.As the increase of the real-time distribution price,the inventory level decreases;as the increase of wholesale price and holding cost,the inventory level decreases.When the real-time delivery price is high,the introduction of on-demand logistics will increase the drug retailers’ total inventory level,and the profit of the drug retailer will be reduced therein;when the immediate delivery price is low,the total inventory of the on-demand logistics drug retailer will be reduced and the change of the pharmaceutical retailers’ profit changes is uncertain.Through numerical analysis,it can be found that when the inventory cost or wholesale price rises,regardless of the traditional mode or the on-demand logistics mode,the retailer’s inventory level is reduced,and the retailer’s profit will also decrease.However,when the wholesale price is low and the inventory cost is medium,the drug inventory level in the on-demand logistics mode is significantly lower than the traditional mode,and the profit of the drug retailer will be improved.When the inventory cost rises,the profit of the platform shows the opposite effect between the on-demand logistics mode and the traditional mode.The profit of the platform in the on-demand logistics mode increases with the retailer’s inventory cost.In the traditional supply chain mode,the profit of the platform decreases with the retailer’s inventory cost.