Research On Channel Design And Platform Information Sharing Strategy Considering Manufacturer's Product Line Decision

With the rapid and convenient of logistics and the comprehensive coverage of mobile Internet,retail platforms' position in the supply chain has been significantly improved by virtue of the traffic and information advantages,and they have become an important channel for manufacturers to touch consumers directly.Manufacturers can either open official stores on the retail platform directly or become product suppliers of the retail platform,both of which will a significant influence on existing offline retailers.At the same time,the diversity and personalization of consumer demand urge manufacturers to provide differentiated products rather than a single product.How manufacturers should adjust their channel strategies and how retail platforms make use of their information advantages have become practical problems to be solved.Based on this,this dissertation explores the interaction of manufacturer encroachment,retail platform sales capacity,supply chain contract selection,information sharing strategy,and manufacturers' product line strategy under the background of product variety.The four primary aspects of the research are as follows.Firstly,Chapter 3 studies the interaction between the product line design decision and the channel encroachment decision.Based on the classical representative consumer model,this chapter gives an inverse demand function with product substitution and channel substitution,and establishes game models for the case of the manufacturer offering a single product and the case of offering a product line combined with the channel encroachment mechanism.This chapter divides the manufacturer's encoachment approach in the product line case into symmetric and asymmetric encroaching based on the sorts of products offered by the manufacturer in the direct channel.We find that with the increase of product substitution and channel substitution,the manufacturer's encroachment strategy shifts from symmetric encroachment to asymmetric encroachment,and finally to no encroachment.Besides,this chapter considers the situation that supply chain members make decisions on sales quantity simultaneously,as well as the condition in which downstream retail platforms compete.Secondly,Chapter 4 studies the impact of changes in retail platform sales capacity on product line decisions made by the manufacturer.Focus on the background of refurbished products,this chapter examines the attitude and sales motivations of the manufacturer and the retail platform towards product line extension in a dual channel supply chain structure.Based on the retail platform's sales ablility for refurbished products,the study is divided into local market selling,cross market selling and dual market selling.We find that when the retail platform can only sell refurbished products in the local market,the manufacturer can effectively control the refurbished product market by a wholesale contract.While the enhancement of the retail platfonn's sales capacity may damage the manufacturer's earning,but the manufacturer may tolerate the retail platform's encroachment,which means that the wholesale contract can no longer effectively control the refurbished product market.Thirdly,Chapter 5 studies the manufacturer's product line quality design and its preference for supply chain contract with retail platform.This chapter analyzes the market demand of products with quality differences,establishes a game model to analyze the two primary contract types in the platform supply chain,namely wholesale and agency contracts.This chapter studies four different product distribution contract combinations:distribution with wholesale contract for both products,distribution with wholesale contract for initial products and agency contract for extended products,distribution with agency contract for both products,and distribution with agency contract for initial products and wholesale contract for extended products.We find that when the same distribution contract is adopted for two products,the quality settings of the two products have no effect on supply chain participants' earnings.When different distribution contracts are adopted for two products,the manufacturer will gradually cut the product quality and even stop expanding the product line to emphasize its dominant position in the supply chain under the wholesale contract,as the platform's revenue sharing proportion increases.Finally,Chapter 6 studies the impact of retail platform's information sharing on the manufacturer's product line decisions under asymmetric knowledge,as well as the supplier audit effort of manufacturer to limit the damage of raw material suppliers violating corporation social responsibility.Consumers in this chapter are divided into two categories according to whether they pay attention to the corporation social responsibility or not,and assuming that the manufacturer is unaware of different types of consumers.This chapter first analyzes one party's decisions when the other party's decisions are being made,and then analyzes the mutual influence of both parties' decisions.We find that after the manufacturer's product line strategy is determined,the retail platform's decision to share information will benefit both supply chain participants.The retail platform's decision to share information may reduce the manufacturer's incentive to extend the product line,and if the retail platform is unsure about the length of the manufacturer's product line,it may hide the consumer information to prevent the manufacturer from shortening the length of its product line.The main contributions of this dissertation are as follows:(1)We extend the manufacturer's channel encroachment strategy to the multiple products situation,and reveal the dual effects of inter product competition and inter channel competition on product line design and channel encraochment in supply chain.(2)Based on the background of refurbished products,we propose the encroaching of retail platform into the upstream market of supply chain,which enriches the theoretical research of bilateral encroachment of supply chain.(3)We explore the impact of product line extension on the supply chain members' preference for two contracts(agency contract and wholesale contract),and reveal the impact mechanism of different contract strategy combinations on products' quality design.(4)Information asymmetry and corporate social responsibility auditing are introduced into manufacturers' product line design decisions,and it is pointed out that the information sharing of retail platform may shorten the length of manufacturer's product line.