Channel competition and collaboration in the presence of hybrid retailing

Weihua Liu, Yanjie Liang, Ou Tang and Xin Ma

Transportation Research Part E: Logistics and Transportation Review, 2022, vol. 160, issue C

Abstract: This paper studies the channel choice problem in an e-retailing market when a reseller and an agency seller are experimenting with a new format, i.e., a hybrid retailing strategy. Under this strategy, the reseller not only sells products to consumers directly, but also expands the market in collaboration with the agency seller who operates a platform. However, the motivation and effectiveness of this strategy are not clear. Therefore, we develop game-theoretic models to investigate retail and wholesale prices, and the equilibrium channel choice. First, we find that the hybrid retailing strategy results in a higher retail price for the reseller; in contrast, the agency seller prefers to reduce the retail price when the fraction of market demand through the hybrid retailing channel is large. Second, we find that the hybrid retailing strategy can benefit all stakeholders when the fraction of market demand through the hybrid retailing channel is small. Third, under a dual retailing channel with price competition, a reseller and an agency seller are still willing to collaborate through a hybrid retailing strategy, because the cost of market expansion caused by this strategy is partly transferred to the manufacturer. Our results can provide meaningful decision support and operational rules for stakeholders to make strategic retail decisions.

Keywords: Multi-channel management; Hybrid retailing; Reselling; Agency selling (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2022
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (11)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1366554522000540
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:transe:v:160:y:2022:i:c:s1366554522000540

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.elsevier.com/wps/find/journaldescription.cws_home/600244/bibliographic
http://www.elsevier. ... 600244/bibliographic

DOI: 10.1016/j.tre.2022.102658

Access Statistics for this article

Transportation Research Part E: Logistics and Transportation Review is currently edited by W. Talley

More articles in Transportation Research Part E: Logistics and Transportation Review from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().