Research On Service Level And Pricing Decisions In A Dual-channel Supply Chain With Reference Price Effect

With the speed development of e-commerce,more and more supply chain enterprises build dual channels to sell products,that is,offline retail channel and online channel coexist.Based on the difference of online channels,two typical modes have been formed:online direct selling mode and online agency selling mode.When online stores coexist with physical stores,consumers will spend a lot of time comparing prices,causing reference price effect and intensifying channel price competition.Due to the increase of consumers’ attention to service,providing high-quality service has become an important way for enterprises to gain competitiveness.How to effectively formulate service level and product price has become the core issue of dual-channel supply chain management.Therefore,considering the existence of reference price effect,service level and pricing decisions of dual-channel supply chain are the key point of the article.Based on Hotelling model,this paper incorporates the reference price effect into the dual-channel supply chain,establishes the models under online direct selling and online agency selling respectively,studies service level and pricing decisions of members,and analyzes the impact of online channel acceptance and reference price effect intensity on decision-making.In addition,in online direct selling model,based on the different power structures,the game models under manufacturer led Stackelberg game(MS),retailer led Stackelberg game(RS)and Nash game(N)are established,and the power structure preference of members are obtained.Finally,the article further discusses the impact of the online channel model on dual-channel supply chain by comparing the decisions and profits of online direct selling model and online agency selling model.The study shows that:(1)The bigger the online channel acceptance,the greater the price,service level,commission and demand of online channels and profit of manufacturer and e-commerce platform.At the same time,the lower the price,service level and demand of offline retail channels and retailer’s profit.(2)Reference price effect intensity always damages the profits of retailer.However,when online channel acceptance is small,the profits of manufacturer and e-commerce platform first increase and then decrease with the increase of reference price effect intensity.(3)In online direct selling model,manufacturer prefers RS game.When the channel product valuation difference is small or reference price effect intensity is strong,retailer prefers MS game,otherwise he prefers RS game.Under RS game,profits of the whole supply chain are the highest.(4)Profits of retailer and the whole supply chain are the highest under online agency selling mode.When channel product valuation difference is small or reference price effect intensity is strong,manufacturer should adopt online direct selling model,otherwise it should adopt online agency selling model.