Research On Pricing Decision Of Dual Channel Supply Chain Under Channel Preferences

With the rapid development of economics and electronic commerce, more andmore companies distribute their products through dual channels beside the traditionalretail channel. At the same time, consumers have more choices and show channelpreferences to one specific channel when purchasing products. This dissertationconsiders a simple dual-channel supply chain based on this situation and analyzes thepricing decisions of channel members under the consideration of channel preferences.We construct a vertical integrated model and a decentralized model and gain theequilibrium solutions under the centralized model and the Stackelberg game modelled by the manufacture. It is found that the revenue sharing contract cannot coordinatethe supply chain, while the combination of a price mark up and down contract canachieve the channel coordination. Then, this dissertation further takes the existence ofretail-captive consumers and the value-added service on direct channel intoconsideration in supply chain members’ pricing decisions. The impacts of consumers’channel preference behaviors on pricing decision and profit allocation in centralizedand decentralized model have been studied. Specifically, we conduct the utilityfunctions when the manufacture adopts different marketing strategies and investigatehis strategy set of channel selection. In centralized situation, we obtain theequilibrium solutions under the different channel policies and find that themanufacture will adopt three different dual channel policies (namely, theretail-focused dual strategy, the direct-focused dual strategy and the pure dual channelstrategy), according to the relative values of the cost of service, the cost of salesthrough the retail channel and the direct channel. Under the decentralized model, westudy the equilibrium solutions when the manufacture adopts exclusive retail channelstrategy and dual channel strategy. Furthermore, we achieve the channel coordinationand win-win situation by using the price mark up and down contract. Finally, theinfluences of the channel preferences, the hybrid consumer segment and thecoefficient of service cost on the optimal pricing decisions, service level and profitallocation have been discussed.