Optimization Decision Making For Agency Commission In Online Group Buying

Agent is an important channel organization in group-buying online. In recent years, agents face a huge business risk for intensified market competition of group-buying online. In academia, since the group-buying online is a relatively new research topic, the study focus on pricing mechanism and consumer behavior, therefore still lacks a systematic investigation into the agent decision-making in group-buying online channel. This paper paid close attention to the facts of Agent behaviors, based on the analysis of pricing mechanism of group-buying online to study the decision and optimization for agent commission, and demonstrated the agent’s decision-making influence to pricing and incomes by game analysis between channel parties. The main research work and results are the following:1. Organized the existing researches of domestic and foreign scholars on group-buying online, mainly analyzed two types of research perspective for pricing mechanism of group-buying online. By learned and organized existing research on the group-buying online on the point of view, content, methods and insufficient, selected the view of this paper and the research methods, and figured out the solution of main research content.2. Based on the existing researches, rebuild the pricing model of group-buying online under two intersecting uncertain demands, and proved that pricing mechanism of group-buying online dominated the posted-price mechanism in this model by optimization method, and established assumptions to study Agency commission strategy. In addition, proved the dominance of pricing mechanism of group-buying online under the comprehensive effect of elasticity demand, laid the foundation for agency commission optimization.3. Analyzed the agent’s commission strategy and the seller’s pricing strategy in a competitive relationship by Stackelberg Model, and explored the impact of agent’s commission strategy to channel pricing and income. Study shown that agent could gain more income applied the floating commission strategy than posted commission strategy, but the floating commission also reduced seller’s income and channel gross income. Because the floating commission strategy aggravated double marginalization, this paper put forward several channel cooperation schemes and discussed the increased income and income allocation by the implementation of this cooperation schemes.4. Defined the three types of promotional behavior of agents and. Firstly, analyzed advertising cost impact on the channel parties’ income under cooperative advertising, thus proposed the strategy to make up for advertising cost and income allocation. Secondly, put forward the purchaseing rebate strategy of agent and pointed out that the essesence of purchaseing rebate was a kind of channel pricing correction. Lastly, under the further assumption of customer behaviors, proposed the customer referral strategy of agent.This paper referenced many literatures and research. Except for some limitation, it has several innovations as follows:1. The research on Dominant condition between mechanism of group-buying online and posted-price mechanism gave broader assumptions and revealed the mechanism income impact of the demand parameter uncertainty conditions.2. Through the study of game relationship of channel parties, derived the optimal commission strategy of agent and revealed the relationship between the agency commission with pricing and income relationship.3. Defined three promotions to optimize commission for agent, proposed the promotion and commission strategy when agent applied different promotions, analyzed the impact of different promotion and commission optimization strategy to pricing and income of the seller and agent in channel.