Research On Manufacturer’s Online Customization Strategy Under Dual Channel Distribution Mode

With the rapid development of e-commerce and information technology,more and more manufacturers have opened online direct sale channel to sell products,such as Dell,Hewlett-Packard,Haier and so on.Online direct sale channel facilitates the sale of customized products.Whether manufacturers should produce standard products or provide customized products is a key problem.It is especially important to find the conditions which manufacturers provide customized products,when manufacturers provide a variety of standard products.At present,the problem of manufacturer’s online customization strategies has attracted the attention of scholars at home and abroad.From the existing research,the researches on the manufacturer’s online customization strategy mostly focus on whether the manufacturer should open the online direct sale channel to sell customized products,when the standard products are only sold by the traditional retailer.But from a realistic perspective,standard products are sold in traditional retailers and manufacturers’ online direct sale channel.Therefore,under the dual-channel distribution model,it is a realistic topic to study the conditions which manufacturers provide customized products in online direct sale channel.In this paper,we study the manufacturer’s online customization strategy under the dual channel distribution mode.The main work is as follow:Firstly,this study refines the problem of manufacturer’s online customization strategy under the dual-channel distribution model.With regard to the shortcomings of existing research,this paper considers whether manufacturers should provide customized products when manufacturer sales standard products by traditional retailers and online direct sale channel simultaneously.And this study refines the manufacturer’s online customization strategy that is more realistic.Secondly,this study proposes the manufacturer’s online customization strategy when the manufacturer only produces a single standard product.Aiming at the problems studied in this paper,the profit maximization model is constructed separately when the manufacturer only produces standard products and when manufacturer simultaneously produces standard products and customized products.Through the model solving and profit comparison,the conditions for manufacturer to provide customized products in the online direct sale channel are obtained.Thirdly,this study proposes the manufacturer’s online customization strategy when the manufacturer produces a variety of standard products.The profit maximization model is constructed separately when the manufacturer only produces standard products and when the manufacturer produces both standard products and customized products.Since the manufacturer produces a variety of standard products,it is possible for the manufacturer to completely cover the market when producing only standard products.At this time,when considering the market division,two situations need to be considered.Based on this solution,through the model solving and profit comparison,the conditions for manufacturers to provide customized products in the online direct sale channel are obtained.Fourthly,the applied research.The manufacturer’s online customization strategy proposed in this paper is applied to the A brand air conditioner company.At first,this study introduces the profile of A brand air-conditioning company,and analyzes the sales status of the company.Then,by matching the conditions of the manufacturer’s proposing customized products in the online direct sale channel with the actual situation of the company,the new and more reasonable product strategy of the company is given.Under the premise of dual-channel distribution mode,namely the manufacturer simultaneously sells standard products in the traditional retailer and the online direct sale channel,this study propose the research framework about considering the conditions for the manufacturers to provide customized products in the online direct sale channel.Which is more in line with the actual situation.In addition,the research in this study enriches the research content of the manufacturer’s online customization strategy,and can provide some ideas and methods for further research work.