Research On Seller Channel Choice And Pricing Strategy Considering Consumer's Network Price Comparison Behavior

With the continuous development of e-commerce,rich online retail platforms has been born in the market,some scholars have divided the online retail platform into two types,paid platforms and free platforms.The former is profitable by charging platform management fees to sellers on the platform,while the latter provides free trading venues for sellers and customers,and other ways to achieve profitability.The paid platforms are often better than free platforms in protecting consumers' rights,so consumers also show different preferences for these two platforms.In order to improve consumers' online shopping experience and enhance their competitive advantages,many online retail platforms provide online price comparison services for consumers,consumers can see the price information of the same commodity on different platforms through the price comparison system.With the help of price comparison system,consumers can easily realize the whole network price comparison of commodities when facing a variety of online shopping channels,thus making purchase decisions quickly.Therefore,more and more consumers tend to use this system to assist purchase.When consumers can easily access the commodity price information of various network channels through the price comparison system,the sellers' channel choice and pricing are deeply affected.From the perspective of sellers,this paper considers consumers' online pricing behavior and competitive factors among sellers,and explores how sellers should choose and price online marketing channels? What factors will affect the channel choice and pricing equilibrium strategy of retailers?In this paper,we construct a four-stage sequential inertial game model around two competing sellers' channel selection and pricing decisions and consumers' purchase decisions.Firstly,we study the optimal pricing decision-making problem of two retailers selling on a single platform,on a single and mixed platform and on a mixed platform.On the basis of this,this paper discusses the equilibrium strategy of online channel selection under the condition of symmetrical and asymmetrical sellers' qualifications through horizontal comparison of profits and game analysis.Through theoretical analysis and numerical analysis,this study finds that the optimal pricing is affected by platform cost,market size and consumer channel acceptance when the retailer chooses to sell on the mixed platform.The pricing of the retailer on the paid platform is always higher than that on the free platform.If the retailer's qualifications aresymmetrical,when the fee of the paid platform is small,if the consumer's acceptance of the free platform is low and the customer base of the paid platform is large,the equilibrium strategy of the retailer's channel choice is to sell on the mixed platform at the same time,if the consumer's acceptance of the free platform is high and the customer base of the paid platform is small,the dominant equilibrium strategy for sellers' channel choice is not to join the paid platform.In addition,when the fee of paid platform is relatively high,if the consumer acceptance of free platform is high and the customer base of paid platform is small,the equilibrium strategy of sellers' channel choice is to only be sold on a single free platform.If the consumers' acceptance of free platform is low and the customer base of paid platform is large,the sellers' channel choice is not to join the paid platform.In addition,if the sellers' qualifications are asymmetric,the only sellers who are qualified to join the paid platform should choose to sell on the mixed platform.