Research On Financing Business Model Selection For Electronic Business Platforms Supply Chain Considering Internal Budget Constraints

With the rapid development of E-commerce economy,Small and Medium Enterprises(SMEs)have gradually become important supply-side players in electronic business platforms.However,the lack of sufficient collateral and credit history of SMEs makes it difficult for them to obtain cheap working capital financing through traditional financing channels,which is one of the most critical challenges faced by most SMEs.As Fin Tech evolves,however,more and more electronic business platforms(Alibaba,Jingdong,Amazon,etc.)have begun to provide online financing services to e-tailers on their platforms.But,since electronic business platforms often have to operate various businesses and allocate their financial resources among a wide range of business segments.Consequently,the platforms may also face capitalconstraints or incur large opportunity costs when the electronic business platform is faced with more than one e-tailer in the market that has capital-constraints.Accordingly,this work considers the problem of choosing a business model for financing electronic business platforms in platform supply chains with dual capital-constraints.It is the first work in the OM area to analyze three mainstream financing models for current electronic business platform financing services,i.e.,self-supporting loans,assisted loans,and joint loans.We first assume that e-tailers can only apply for financing services from electronic business platforms due to the lack of sufficient collateral and credit history.Then,the electronic business platform chooses whether and how to cooperate with traditional financing institutions based on the e-tailer’s transaction datas.Furthermore,we use a multi-period Stackelberg game model to depict the game relationship between the electronic business platform(leader),the bank(sub-leader)and the e-tailer(follower).Then,we derive the game equilibrium solutions for electronic business platforms and etailers under the three financing models by backward induction and maximizing the expected profits of the game participants.Through comparative analysis,we find that the choice of financing business models by the electronic business platform and the whole supply chain largely depends on the interaction between the opportunity cost and the unit commission fee of the platform,and the procurement cost of the e-tailer.Specifically,if the opportunity cost of the electronic business platform is greater than the one for the bank,then the electronic business platform prefers to adopt either an assisted loan or a joint loan,rather than a selfsupported loan for the e-tailer.Otherwise,the electronic business platform provides the e-tailer with a self-supported loan or assisted loan.In particular,given the e-tailer’s relatively high procurement cost,the electronic business platform may adopt an assisted loan mode.In addition,this work finds that the profit of the electronic business platform under the assisted financing model is a concave function about the service fee charged by the platform to the bank,which means that there is a unique optimal solution for the service fee charged by the electronic business platform to the bank.Moreover,the service fee charged by the electronic business platform to the bank is a minus function with respect to the unit commission fee of the platform and the procurement cost of the e-tailer,which means that the electronic business platform can gain greater profits by subsidizing the bank when the unit commission fee of the platform or the procurement cost of the e-tailer is relatively large.