Research On Reatailer's Product Sales And Return Chanel Strategy Under Omnichannel Modes

With the rapid development and wide application of information technology,e-commerce has been increasingly developed fast and become more popular,which has brought tremendous impact on physical retailing.In recent years,the popularity of smart phones and mobile terminals has changed people's shopping habits,and customers have been more and more accustomed to online shopping.As a result,traditional retailers are facing ever serious challenges.There was a continuous trend of closing physical stores for retail giants such as Wal-Mart,Macy,s,Sears,Suning,Vanguard and GOME.At the same time,online retailing is also facing enormous challenges.The number of online users has reached a certain scale,and it will be costly to develop new customers.Besides,online retailing is disadvantageous at providing consumers with the experience of quality and timeliness of logistics.For consumers,e-commerce platform and mobile e-commerce provide them with various accesses to purchase products.The heterogeneity among consumers become more considerable,and consumers pay more attention to service experience.People are more willing to take full advantage of fragmented time and product information from various channels to make purchase decision at anytime and anywhere,In order to better meet the personalized needs of consumers,retailers are keeping change their chain modes to sell products more effectively.In particular,they try to integrate the physical channel,e-commerce channel and mobile e-commerce channel into the omnichannel retailing mode.To meet the requirement of consumers' personalized and differentiated shopping experience and make it more convenient for consumers to buy products or return unsatisfied products,retail giants are planning to adopt omnichannel retailing strategies.and different models have already emerged recently.such as Buy Online and Pickup in Store(BOPS)and Buy Online and Return in Store(BORS).As the omnichannel retailing has been rapidely developed and widely applied,numerous emerging issues in channel management and return policy management arise.In such circumstance,this dissertation focus on addressing the buy online and pickup in store strategy and buy online and return in store strategy in different environments.The main research questions include:(1)Retailer's channel management with buy online and pickup in store strategy in dual-channel supply chain;(2)Retailer's channel management with buy online and pickup in store strategy in the competitive market environment;(3)Retailer's return channel management with buy online and return in store strategy.This dissertation includes six chapters,which are elaborated as follows.The first chapter highlights the importance of retailers' channel management and return management in omnichannel retailing.The research methodology,the main contents and research significance are further clarified.In chapter two,the related literature of channel management and return management is reviewed.Chapter three conducts the impacts of ofrering BOPS channel and spillover effect on the optimal retail channel choice in dual-channel supply chain.To this end.three scenarios are considered:both the manufacturer and the retailer not providing the BOPS channel,the manufacturer or the retailer implementing the BOPS channel.Chapter three derives equilibrium channel strategies of the manufacturer and the retailer and investigates the impacts of introducing BOPS channel on the optimal retailer channel choice of a dual channel supply chain.The results show that when the manufacturer offering BOPS Strategy,the manufacturer 1s beneficial if the spillover effect is sufficiently large,while the retailer 1s beneficial if the spillover effect 1s relatively low;when the retailer implementing BOPS Strategy,the manufacturer is better of if the spillover effect is sufficiently large,while the retailer is better of if the spillover effect is relatively low.Accordingly,either the retailer or the manufacturer offering BOPS strategy,both the manufacturer and the retailer are better of when the spillover effect is moderate.In the fourth chapter,channel management with buy online and pickup in store in the competitive market environment is examined.For this purpose,three scenarios are considered:no traditional brick-and-mortar(BM)[dual channel(DC)]retailers,both the two BM(DC)retailers and only one BM(DC)retailer providing the BOPS strategy.Chapter 4 derives the equilibrium channel strategies and examines the impacts of introducing BOPS channel on the optimal sales efforts levels and products price.The results show that BM retailers and DC retailers need to be cautious to determine whether implementing this channel in a competitive market.Specifically,we present the conditions under which retailers benefit from implementing BOPS channel.In particular,when the proportion of consumers with a relatively high inconvenience cost is sufficiently large,retailers are always better off implementing this strategy.Interestingly,products with a relatively high return rate or return cost are not suitable for BOPS option for BM retailers,but may benefit dual-channel retailers.We also find that the dual-channel retailer is not always better off adopting the differential pricing schemeThe fifth chapter investigates retailer's channel management with buy online and return in store strategy.To this end,two scenarios are considered:dual channel retailer implementing or not implementing buy online and return in store channel.Chapter 5 derives the equilibrium channel strategies and examines the impacts of introducing cross-channel return channel on the optimal retailer channel choice and return strategy.The results show that the retailer cannot always benefit from adopting the cross-channel return option.Specifically,when the cross-selling profit is sufficiently high,the retailer is better off adopting this option,and vice versa.Interestingly,the retailer benefits from offering a relatively low return service charge,especially when adopting the cross-channel return option.We also find that the retailer is not always better off adopting uniform or differential pricing schemes.Numerical results further show that,the retailer benefits from adopting the cross-channel return option when the return rate is relatively low or moderate.In the last chapter,this dissertation summarizes all the Work and provides some helpful suggestions for future research.The contributions of this dissertation include:(1)This dissertation considers the impacts of spillover effect on the optimal retail channel choice in dual-channel supply chain.The conditions under which the retailer benetits from implementing BOPS channel are presented.(2)The optimal retailer choice strategys channel management with buy online and pickup in store in the competitive market environment are proposed.(3)The decision-making model of buy online and return in store strategy for dual-channel retailers is constructed.This dissertation presents the conditions under which the dual-channel retailer benefit from offering buy online and return in store strategy and finds that the dual-channel retailer is not always better off adopting the differential pricing scheme.