Exclusive And Direct Selling Channel Configuration Strategy In Competitive Supply Chain

Selling channel is the lifeline of commodity circulation,firms put much emphasis on how to construct the efficient channel structure.The prosperity of e-commerce leads to various selling channels and brings new challenges to channel management.Based on the systemic literature review,this dissertation adopts optimization theory and game theory to derive the firms’ optimal channel configuration strategies considering three competitive scenarios in supply chain.This dissertation first studies the quantity decision of selling channel and analyzes the firms’ tradeoff between multiple and exclusive channels,then focuses on single selling channel and studies the firms’ preference on direct and indirect channels,and finally analyzes both quantity and type decisions of selling channel and proposes the multi-product firms’ optimal channel structure.This dissertation is elaborated as follows.First,the dissertation studies the exclusive selling channel strategy by taking the potential competitor into consideration.When the upstream supplier chooses exclusive selling,the downstream independent manufacturer can rely on its R&D capability to produce substitute products and compete with the supplier.Based on the interaction between the potential competition and the supplier’s channel strategy,this dissertation develops a game-theoretic model,consisting of a supplier and two manufacturers,and proposes the supplier’s optimal channel strategy under two scenarios: exogenous R&D capability and endogenous capability improvement.The results show that on one hand,exclusive selling will align the interests of the supplier and the independent manufacturer,mitigating double marginalization between them;on the other hand,it leads to demand loss and potential competition.When the independent manufacturer’s capability falls into the intermediate region,it is profitable for the supplier to construct exclusive selling channel.In addition,the supplier can curtail the independent manufacturer’s investment on capability improvement through exclusive selling,and the independent manufacturer can use improvement to leverage the supplier’s pricing power.Second,the dissertation studies the direct selling channel in the complementary market.There exists dependency between the demands of complementary products,that is,the increase of the demand of one product will push up the demand of its complementary products.In the context of e-commerce and complementary market,the dissertation derives the optimal price/quantity decisions and profits under four selling modes and proposes the equilibrium direct selling strategy.The results show that direct selling will weaken the positive externality between complementary products.When the degree of complementarity is high,it is not in the interest of the manufacturer to choose direct selling,even though the operations efficiency is high in the direct channel.The manufacturer will choose direct selling only when both the degree of the complementarity and the direct selling cost are low.It is also found that the change of channel power will lead to different equilibrium channel strategies and the increased channel power may hurt the manufacturer itself.Lastly,this dissertation studies the selling channel strategies of distributing multiple products in the context of co-opetition.Considering the co-opetition between firms,the dissertation captures the impact of product assortment on consumer searching for product information,and proposes the multi-product manufacturer’s optimal selling channel strategies.The results show that adopting dual-selling channel can effectively increase the sales,however,it disperses consumer traffic in different channels,leading to low efficiency.When the search cost is medium and the direct selling cost is low,the manufacturer’s optimal strategy is to adopt asymmetric dual-selling channel,that is,the manufacturer sells more categories of products in the direct selling channel.The discussion in extension reveals that the above asymmetric channel strategy can reduce the supply chain profit.