Pricing, advertising, and direct retailing on the Internet

My dissertation includes three business scenarios addressing the roles of information forecast value and competitive and cooperative advertising in the direct marketing.; First, we studied the information forecast in the first essay. The focus of this study is information forecast value and the profound impact it has in today's business market. When an Internet-based firm sells its new product through the direct market, the accuracy of marketing forecast information plays important impact on the slopes (coefficients) of price and advertising spending, and thus expected profits.; Second, we studied the dual-channel dynamics in the presence of direct channel advertising in the second essay. With the rapid development of the Internet, many manufacturers nowadays use this technology to engage in direct sales. The mix of retailing with a direct channel adds a new dimension of competition and complementarities to a product's distribution channels.; Finally, we studied the cooperative advertising marketing strategy in the third essay. The focus of this study is cooperative (co-op) advertising and the profound impact it has in today's business market. The use of co-op advertising in a dual marketing channel has added, a new dimension of competition. Our study provides an understanding of co-op advertising strategy in a dual channel supply chain under two different competitive scenarios: Bertrand and Stackelberg equilibrium. Under Bertrand competition, the manufacturer selects its direct price and the rate of participation in co-op advertising at the same time as the retailer selects its retail price and co-op advertising expenditure. Finally, we compare the profit gains under these two marketing games. Based on our results, we propose the optimal strategies that system members should adopt in a dual channel competition. We also illustrate that by strategically implementing a cooperative adverting strategy under a different market structure, both the system players can effectively improve their overall profits in a dual channel supply chain management. We also present several important managerial insights from our model. (Abstract shortened by UMI.)...