| The development of Internet technologies and the emergence of new types of agricultural machinery purchase entities have made it increasingly common for agricultural machinery manufacturers to establish direct channels to encroach the retail market.In addition,with the increasingly fierce market competition,the manufacturers and retailers have started to search for new profit points.As a kind of product service plan,the extended warranty is increasingly concerned by manufacturers and retailer.The extended warranty is independent of product and chooses whether to purchase after the consumer purchases the product.For the consumer who purchased the extended warranty,the seller provides free maintenance or replacement for the faulty product within the extended warranty period and scope.Previous research on the extended warranty strategy focuses on the single-channel supply chain structure.Under the dual-channel supply chain,not only there are more modes to sale the extended warranty,but also the existence of channel competition will affects the profits of the manufacturers under different extended warranty models,thus affecting manufacturers' selection strategies for extended warranty.Therefore,this paper attempts to study the choice of the extended model of the manufacturer in the dual-channel supply chain.In the dual-channel supply chain,the manufacturers can choose whether to provide extended warrantyin in direct channels(original factory extended warranty);or whether to provide extended warranty to the retail channels.If the manufacturer provides extended warranty to the retail channel,the retailer must simultaneously accept the products and extended warranty provided by the manufacturer.If the manufacturer does not provide extended warranty to the retail channel,the retailer may choose to provide and sell it(retailers-own extended warranty),outsourced the extended warranty to third parties(third-party extended warranty),or abandoned sales of extended warranty.In this paper,we use game theory and inverse inductive method to analyze how the competition between channels and repair costs of all parties affect the companies' equilibrium price decision and the manufacturer's optimal extended warranty strategy.Based on the benchmark that none of the companies sell the extended warranty,we first studied the profitability changes of the manufacturers in different extended warranty modes that may exist in the dual-channel supply chain.The following conclusions are drawn:(1)if only the direct channels provide and sell extended warranty,the manufacturer's profit will increase.(2)If the extended warranty of the retail channel is provided by the manufacturer,it's profit will increases;if the extended warranty is provided by the retailer or a third party,the manufacture's profit increase if and only if the retailer(third party)has a relative low repair cost.(3)If the manufacturer acts as a provider of retail channel extended warranty,he should always wholesale extended warranty to retailers at below-cost prices.In order to find the manufacturer's optimal extended warranty strategy,we compared the profits of manufacturers and retailers in each extended warranty mode,the following conclusions are drawn:(1)The manufacturers should always provide and sell the extended warranty in the direct channel.(2)If the retailer has the ability to provide extended warranty,the party that has an advantage in repair costs should act the provider of the extended warranty in the retail channel.In particular,when the costs of the two parties are the similar,the manufacturer should acts the provider;the introduction of a third party at this condition does not change the manufacturer's extended warranty strategy.(3)If the retailer does not have the conditions to provide extended warranty,the manufacturer should provide it to retail channel;and the manufacturer should abandon to provide the extended warranty to retail channels if the repair cost of a third party is very low. |
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