Sustainable Strategy Analysis: Platform Channel Configuration and Slotting Fee Design under Differentiated Quality Investment

Chunyu Li, Peng Xing () and Yanting Li
Additional contact information
Chunyu Li: Business School, Faculty of Economics, Liaoning University, Shenyang 110136, China
Peng Xing: Business School, Faculty of Economics, Liaoning University, Shenyang 110136, China
Yanting Li: School of Business Administration, Northeastern University, Shenyang 110169, China

Sustainability, 2022, vol. 14, issue 23, 1-28

Abstract: As a medium for matching supply and demand, platforms are changing industrial structures and consumption patterns to achieve sustainable operations. The platform establishes a self-operated channel on the basis of the present agent channel, which generates new conflicts and pollution problems. Considering the competition and quality investment, we investigate the platform’s optimal strategies, i.e., pricing, quality investment, channel format and slotting fee contract. The result shows that the platform adopting a dual channel structure contributes to sustainable operations because it can increase selling prices, sales volumes and consumers’ willingness when the channel introduction cost is lower. Meanwhile, the supplier always prefers the dual-channel structure because it can increase sales volume, profits and consumer surplus. Meanwhile, contrary to the commission rate, the emergence of competition promotes quality investment and guarantees consumer satisfaction. Under the intense channel conflicts, a variable slotting fee contract (VFC) is more profitable than a unit fixed slotting fee contract (UFC) owing to alleviating the competition; otherwise, the UFC has a larger improvement effect on profits. Meanwhile, with the increase in consumer quality sensitivity, UFC gradually cannibalizes VFC and occupies the core position in the operation.

Keywords: sustainable strategy; self-operated channel; variable slotting fee contract; unit fixed slotting fee contract; quality investment (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: O13 Q Q0 Q2 Q3 Q5 Q56 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2022
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/14/23/16095/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/14/23/16095/ (text/html)

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:gam:jsusta:v:14:y:2022:i:23:p:16095-:d:991007

Access Statistics for this article

Sustainability is currently edited by Ms. Alexandra Wu

More articles in Sustainability from MDPI
Bibliographic data for series maintained by MDPI Indexing Manager ().