Researchon Pricing Policiesof Supply Chain Basedon Consumer Preferences In Internet Environment

The Internet has significantly changed customers’ consumption patterns, and manufacturers’ and retailers’ sale models. Customers today have increasingly accepted and become accustomed to purchasing products online, which prompts more and more manufacturers to redesign their traditional sale channel structures by engaging in direct sale in order to reach different customer segments that cannot be reached by the traditional retail channel, expend market coverage, control sale price, and increase profits.Empirical studies have shown that service quality(including the retail services of the traditional channel and the delivery lead time of the direct channel) even go beyond product price as one of the major factors influencing consumer acceptance of the direct channel. Retail services and delivery lead time have significant effects on demand, profit, and pricing strategy. However, there is scant literature addressing the pricing policies in a dual-channel supply chain on the promised delivery lead time of a direct channel and retail services. To fill this gap, a pricing and demand competitive strategy considering consumer time-sensitive and service-sensitive were proposed. We examine the optimal decisions of delivery lead time, retail services and price in a centralized and a decentralized dual-channel supply chain using the two-stage optimization technique and Stackelberg game, and analyze the impacts of delivery lead time and customers acceptance of a direct channel on the manufacturer’s and retailer’s pricing behaviors.To deal with the false failure returns in a dual-channel supply chain, a pricing and demand strategy considering consumer retail services and return risk was proposed. By numerical analysis, we analytically show that the false failure return risk strongly influences the manufacturer’s and the retailer’s pricing strategies and profits.To study the influence of retail services and delivery lead time strategies on Online To Offline supply chain pricing decision, the two-echelon supply chain system of one manufacturer and one retailer was considered. The customers could buy the product online and get the retail services offline. The demands in this channel was influenced by price, retail service level and delivery lead time. The pricing, retail services level and delivery lead time decisions in a centralized and a decentralized Online To Offline supply chain based on Stackelberg game were analyzed. The two-stage optimization technique was utilized to obtain the optimal pricing, retail services level and delivery lead time decisions. Numerical studies reveal that service level and delivery lead time strongly influence the manufacturer’s and the retailer’s pricing strategies, and the ratio of demand sensitive parameter values have great effects on the retail services, delivery lead time and pricing decisions.