摘要
在零售商服务努力的背景下,以一种传统的单一零售模式和一种品牌商侵入后的双渠道模式为研究对象,研究了在有无市场需求信息两种状态下品牌商的侵入决策。本文构建了古诺数量竞争模型,求解出无信息状态和有信息状态下各参与主体的均衡销量和期望利润,从需求信息与渠道间竞争的权衡角度探讨考虑零售商服务努力时各要素对品牌商侵入决策的影响,包括市场确定性需求、需求信息不确定性的波动程度、需求信息精度等因素。研究发现,针对零售商的服务努力,品牌商采用直销渠道侵入市场,哪怕在终端市场上引入了竞争,但通过侵入获得更精确的需求信息,从而相对于无信息状态品牌商在更大的参数空间里有侵入动机,这也说明了市场需求信息不仅能提高品牌商的预期收益,同时还能起到激励品牌商侵入的效果。在一定条件下,品牌商面对较高的渠道竞争仍会选择增设直销渠道来获得更准确的市场需求信息。如果侵入策略带来的信息效应正向作用小于渠道竞争带来的反向作用,品牌商会放弃侵入,选择无竞争的单一零售渠道。
With the rapid growth of economy development and e-commerce boom today,the integration of online resources demand are increasingly such that many brand owners,like Apple,HP,Dell,Nike,Cranes,would spend a fixed entry cost to build up a direct selling channel,apart from the traditional retailing channel,in which products are sold directly to the end consumer.Such strategy is defined as“brand owner encroachment”.For brand owners,encroachment is a viable way to gain profits,increase pricing flexibility and obtain greater channel controlling power.However,the establishment of the direct channels requires huge expenditure,including the cost of opening franchise stores,website construction and maintenance,new staff recruitment and training,etc.In addition,brand owners are more informed of the market condition than retailers because they have been engaged in the selling process for a quite long time especially when brand owners decide to open a direct selling channel in which they can foster greater knowledge about market demand information,enabling them to make operational decisions more wisely.For retailers,brand owner encroachment is seen as a big threat because the advent of the direct selling channel allows the brand owner to act as the upstream supplier in the traditional vertical supply chain structure as well as a competitor in the horizontal market.To deal with the threat of direct selling encroachment by the brand owners,retailers would take a series of measures to improve their service level to enhance their market competitiveness.Therefore,in the context of the retailors′continuous improvement of service level in the traditional selling channel,brand owners face an explicit trade-off between information aspect and competition aspect when making decisions on whether to open an additional online direct selling channel.On the one hand,brand owners can avoid fierce channel competition and save costs by maintaining original retail channel.On the other hand,direct selling channel enables brand owners to obtain more accurate market demand information so as to set more reasonable product price.In conclusion,it is of certain research significance and value to explore how the demand uncertainty influences brand owners′encroachment strategy given retailer′s improving service level.In this paper,we consider a supply chain structure consisting of a retailer operating in the traditional retail channel with service effort and a brand owner who considers the direct selling encroachment strategy.The retailer and the brand owner engage in Cournot competition in the terminal market.This paper constructs a three-stage game-theoretic dynamic model.Firstly,the brand owner considers whether to build an additional direct channel;Secondly,the brand owner decides on the wholesale price according to the obtained demand information.Finally,the brand owner and the retailer simultaneously decide on the sales quantity according to the known wholesale price and obtained demand information.The retailer and the brand owner make quantity decisions to maximize their profits respectively.The paper uses backward induction method to solve the optimal solutions of the brand owner and the retailer.The paper first takes the situation without demand information as a benchmark case.Further,this paper compares the optimal equilibrium strategy in the situation with demand information to find out the impact of demand uncertainty on brand owners′channel encroachment strategy,and obtains more in-depth observation and management insights on each parameter through numerical experiments.It is found that the channel encroachment decision of brand owners mainly depends on the value of the entry cost which is known as the cost effect.When the entry cost is higher than a certain threshold,the brand owner would choose to maintain a single retail channel because the high entry cost will lead to the situation where the increasing profit is still not enough to cover the cost,thus hindering brand owners′encroachment decision.On the contrary,when the entry cost is lower than a certain threshold,brand owners are more inclined to choose the strategy of establishing the direct selling channel.The channel encroachment of brand owners makes them have higher channel power,which not only increases the profits of brand owners,but also indirectly reduces the profits of retailers.In addition,compared to the benchmark model without demand information,even if establishing direct selling channels would introduce fierce competition in the terminal market,brand owners still choose to add direct marketing channels to invade the market in a larger parameter space because they can obtain more accurate demand information with direct selling channel encroachment.This also demonstrates that demand information plays a critically important role in improving the expected revenue of brand owners such that encourage brand owners to establish direct selling channels to realize dual-channel sales.Therefore,only when brand owners obtain relevant market information in advance,and make full use of the information advantages of their own product market,they will gain more competitive advantages than the retailor in the terminal market.Finally,under certain conditions,brand owners will choose to invade to obtain more accurate demand information even if they may endure fierce channel competition.If the positive effect of the information obtained from direct selling encroachment strategy is less significant than the negative effect of channel competition,the brand owner will give up the channel encroachment decision and choose to maintain the original single retail channel without competition.By building a Cournot quantity competition model in the context of demand uncertainty,from the view of the service level of retailers and the brand owner′s channel selection strategy,this paper attributes enriches the study about brand owner encroachment.The paper conducts the study about the brand owner′s channel selection strategy under two different scenarios,namely,without demand information and with demand information,to provide a theoretical basis and practical inspiration for brand owner′channel encroachment strategy given retailers′continuous efforts on improving service level.To sum up,this paper highlights the real market demand uncertainty in the operation of the reality,the distance of the supply chain members to the market as well as the difference in the accuracy of the information to attribute research to how the intensity of competition,information accuracy and demand fluctuation degree affect the brand owner′s encroachment strategy.To some extent,this paper enriches the theoretical research of brand owners′encroachment strategies under the information sharing mechanism.
作者
周建亨
石亚铭
ZHOU Jianheng;SHI Yaming(Glorious Sun School of Business&Management,Donghua University,Shanghai 200051,China)
出处
《管理工程学报》
CSSCI
CSCD
北大核心
2023年第2期151-163,共13页
Journal of Industrial Engineering and Engineering Management
基金
国家自然科学基金重点项目资助(71832001)
国家自然科学基金资助项目(71872036)
教育部人文社科资助项目(18YJA630153)。
关键词
品牌商侵入
需求不确定
信息精度
竞争强度
零售商服务努力
Brand owner encroachment
Demand uncertainty
Information precision
Competition intensity
Retailer service effort
作者简介
通讯作者:石亚铭(1997-),男,江苏南通人,东华大学旭日工商管理学院,硕士研究生,研究方向:供应链管理。
