Research On Decision-Making Of Retail Platform Considering Consumers' Choice Of Shopping Channels

Under the new retail background,retail channels have gradually diversified.Large-scale retail platform will open up both online and offline channels simultaneously,and sell through self-operated channel.In addition,brand owner will also consign sales on retail platform or open up direct channel independently.Therefore,consumers are faced with the choice of shopping channels.In recent years,retail platform pays more and more attention to consumers' various behaviors and shopping experience in the shopping process.Consumers' channel decisions are influenced by their channel preference,demand migration,fairness concern,as well as the market environment such as retail enterprise's marketing activity.The result of consumer's channel selection directly affects the relevant decision and profit of the retail platform.Therefore,the multi-channel retail supply chain with consumer's channel preference,demand migration,consumer's fairness concern and retail enterprise's marketing effort is studied and the decision-making behavior of the retail platform is analyzed to provide support for the development of retail platform.Firstly,the retail platform considering channel preference and demand migration is studied.The influence of consumer's channel preference and demand migration behavior on optimal pricing of the retail platform and profits of online and offline channels is mainly analyzed.It is found that when consumer's preference for offline store or the proportion of offline consumers migrating to online channel increases,the retail price of product increases.When consumer has a high preference for offline channel,retail platform should give full play to the unique advantages of online and offline channels to restrain consumer's demand migration behavior and improve their channel stickiness.Otherwise,it should encourage consumer's demand migration.When the consumer's migration level is low,if they prefer offline channel,the retail platform can increase investment in store operation.When the migration level is moderate,the retail platform can enhance consumer's positive perception of the platform image by improving the service level of offline store,thus increasing the amount of online orders.When the migration level is high,if consumer's preference for offline store increases,retail platform should improve online service level and dredge the flow of offline store,guiding consumer to online consumption.Next,the retail market with brand's consignment channel or retail platform's self-operated channel is regarded as the research object.By introducing consumer's fairness concern,a game model between brand owner and retail platform is established and the pricing decision and channel strategy of the retail platform under the single-channel mode and mixed-channel mode are studied.It has concluded that the retail price of the retail platform under the single-channel mode and the mixed-channel mode with low revenue share ratio is negatively affected by consumer's fairness concern.If the market channel mode has not yet been formed,the retail platform can decide to direct the brand owner to consign on the platform or prevent their consignment based on the level of consumer's fairness concern and the revenue sharing ratio.If the market channel mode has been formed,the retail platform can reduce the product price transparency to reduce consumer's concern about transaction fairness and increase the revenue sharing ratio when there is only the brand's consignment channel in the market.When there is only retail platform's self-operated channel,the retail platform can reduce consumer's fairness concern by providing product discount.When the market is mixed-channel mode,the retail platform should maintain the level of consumer's fairness concern and revenue sharing ratio at a moderate level.Finally,the marketing effort decision of retail platform is considered when the brand's direct channel and retail platform's self-operated channel coexist and compete.By introducing the retail marketing effort,the consumer's demand model and the enterprise's profit model under the influence of enterprises' marketing efforts are established,and the marketing effort decision and profit of the retail platform under the four channel marketing modes are analyzed.It shows that the marketing behavior of brand has no influence on the marketing decision of retail platform.Retail platform should make marketing effort as much as possible and incline to self-operate product of the brand that doesn't carry out marketing effort.The marketing effort level of the retail platform is positively correlated with the retail price,and is negatively affected by the wholesale price.Only when consumer's preference for the retail platform's self-operated channel is above a certain threshold,the retail platform can increase the profit by increasing the retail price of product.When brand raises wholesale price,retail platform should reduce consumer's preference for the self-operated channel to a certain range.