Research On Channel Choice Behavior Considering Decision Inertia And Pricing Of Retailers

With the widespread of the concept of "new retail",retailers pay increasingly attention to the integrated development of online and offline channels,and pricing strategy has a great impact on the cooperative development of channels.Since the cost structure of online channel is different from that of offline channel,when the same product is sold in different channels at the same time,retailers may adopt different pricing for different channels in order to get the maximum benefits.In the face of different channels,how consumers will choose?The studies found that many factors in addition to price would affect channel choice.The "decision inertia" in consumer behavior is the influencing factor this thesis focuses on.This thesis focuses on the decision inertia of consumers and external competition within retails pricing.Before establishing the pricing model,the author conducted an empirical study on consumers' channel selection behavior based on a questionnaire,and the data showed that consumers did have inertial behaviors when choosing marketing channels.Consumers do not always choose the lowest price,but prefer to the familiar channels.Consumers will not take all marketing channels as their alternative set.Instead,they will take several channels they are familiar with as alternatives and only make the final choice among them.There are also significant differences in choosing reference channels of consumers with different channel preferences.For example,consumers who are used to shopping online will still choose the online channel when referring to other channels.Based on empirical research,this thesis studied a market with a dual channel retailer and single online retailer,and established channel choice model considering decision inertia and retailers pricing model.Some conclusions are drawn from the analysis of examples.For example,when people have a strong desire to change the current choice,the demand will be concentrated on the channel with the greatest utility.When people have a strong desire to maintain the current choice,the demand will be affected by the choice in previous stage and disperses on the channel with the greater utility in the previous stage.As the inertia coefficient increases,the optimal price and profit of the channel with greater utility in previous stage will increase gradually.