Platform channel strategy of selling format: Effect of asymmetric service information

Yiwen Bian, Hang Wang, Shuai Yan and Xiaohua Han

Transportation Research Part E: Logistics and Transportation Review, 2024, vol. 185, issue C

Abstract: In platform-based retailing settings, product related services, e.g., product promotion, consulting service, fast order fulfillment, logistics service and even gift wrapping, may be offered by the upstream supplier or the downstream online platform, depending on whether the platform is operating under the agency or reselling format. Such service information may be asymmetric, which highly affects how and whether the online platform chooses the selling format. A platform’s optimal strategies of selling format selection and information sharing with asymmetric service information are explored in this work. We show that whether the reselling or agency format is adopted highly depends on which player can offer a high-type service. Specifically, when the platform can offer a high-type service and the service level difference is sufficiently large, it will prefer the reselling format, but the agency format otherwise. It is found that the optimal selling format selection directly affects the selling player’s information sharing strategy in the supply chain. In particular, the platform will always choose to share the asymmetric service information when it adopts the reselling format, but the supplier does not always do so when adopting the agency format.

Keywords: Online platform; Reselling format; Agency format; Asymmetric service information; Information sharing (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2024
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1366554524000991
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:185:y:2024:i:c:s1366554524000991

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.2024.103508

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 ().