Consider The Characteristics Of Different Types Of Products Manufacturer Channel Selection Strategy

E-commerce based on the Internet and logistics technology has brought profound changes to the social economic. In recent years, more and more manufacturers have chosen to open direct online channels and some of them have already profited from the new channel. However, more and more problems have also been exposed. In addition to the lack of business knowledge, technology, management skills and experience, one of the most important reasons is the product type, and the direct online channel is not suitable for every product or service. Therefore, facing the much more business opportunities in the e-commerce market and the distinct advantages of the direct online channel, it has become a very important problem to decide whether to open direct online channel or not for the manufacturers, especially for the manufacturers who have had the traditional retail channels.In this context, this paper studied the different channel selection strategies of the standard product, experience product and luxury manufacturers. Firstly, according to the consumer utility theory, it established different consumer utility functions of different channel structures and considered different main influencing factors of each product type; Secondly, it derived corresponding demand functions under different channel strategies, made different stackelberg game models between each product manufacturer who was leader and the traditional retailer, and solved all equilibrium outcomes to do analyses; And then, it discussed what conditions would and how affect the manufacturer’s channel choice strategies, and examined the influences of those strategies on the retailer and the whole supply chain. At last, based all above researches, this paper summarized the main conclusions and analyzed their practical usages, which were aimed to provide some useful theoretical references and practical guidances to help the manufacturers of different product types make correct decisions in reality society.The main conclusions are following:1. The conditions of different product manufacturers to choose dual-channelCompared with the single-channel strategies, the manufacturer will open dual-channel when the direct online channel can make more profit:(1) The standard product manufacturer will choose to set up dual-channel, when the level of customers’ acceptance of the direct online channel is above a threshold, whether the level of the difficult coefficient of service is high or not; (2)The experience manufacturer will open dual-channel, when the level of customers’acceptance of direct online channel is high and no matter the return probability is large or little; She will also open dual-channel when the level of customers’acceptance of direct online channel is middling and the return probability is under one threshold.(3) The luxury manufacturer will choose dual-channel, when there are little traditional consumers and the investment needed by the direct online channel is not very much; She will also make the same choice when there are proper number of traditional consumers and the investment in direct online channel is under another threshold.2. The impact of the dual-channel on the retailer and the whole supply chainIn some conditions, the dual-channel structure has more affective influences on the manufacturer, costumers, market total demand and the supply chain performance than the single-channel situation. But the impact on retailer is a special case:The channel conflicts resulted in both the standard product manufacturer’s and the experience product manufacturer’s dual-channel strategies don’t exit all the time, because in some proper conditions the retailer could also get benefit from the dual-channel without any coordinated strategy. However, the luxury retailer’s profit must be harmed by the luxury manufacturer’s dual-channel strategy.