Reserch On Competition And Cooperation Strategy Of Dual-Channel Supply Chain Considering Customer Service Expectation

The development of e-commerce and the Internet economy has brought new opportunities and challenges to business operations,and many large manufacturers such as Nike,Huawei and and UNIQLO have opened online shopping channels.At the same time,e-commerce companies such as Tmall,Suning and JD.COM,have opened offline experience stores to expand the profit space,resulting in a dual-channel sales model of online and offline.In the face of channel conflicts,supply chain members cooperate with each other to complement each other’s advantages,while providing quality services to improve competitiveness,and the competition of the dual channels also extends from product competition to service competition.However,customers have expectation on service.If the service level is too high,it will bring high service cost,and if the service level is too low to meet the customer’s expectation,it will cause the loss of customers,and the demand and profit will decrease.Therefore,in the face of the complex supply chain structure and customer service expectation,how manufacturers and retailers should provide services at reasonable prices and how to choose partners to maximize profits has become an important issue that needs to be addressed.Based on the above observations,this paper composes the existing research literature and related theories,and extends the dual-channel supply chain model.When considering customer expectation,firstly,a dual-channel supply chain model consisting of a manufacturer and a retailer is constructed and the optimal pricing strategy under centralized and decentralized decision making is solved separately for service variation.Then construct a two-channel supply chain model consisting of one manufacturer and two retailers,solve for the optimal pricing strategies of the supply chain members under mutual non-cooperation,two retailers’ cooperation and manufacturer competition,respectively,and conduct numerical analysis of the key parameters.Finally,the equilibrium strategy is solved in the dual-channel supply chain model with one manufacturer and two retailers under manufacturer-retailer cooperation and competition from other retailers.This study provides a theoretical basis for the pricing and cooperation strategies of supply chain members when considering customer service expectation under different channel structures.Research indicates:(1)In the dual-channel supply chain consisting of a manufacturer and a retailer,when the supply chain service level is higher than the customer’s expectation,the product price increases with the increase of the service level of this channel,and the total profit of the supply chain tends to increase and then decrease with the increase of the service level of a certain channel.When the supply chain service level is less than the customer expectation the product price shows a trend of decreasing and then increasing with the service level of this channel,and the total profit of the supply chain increases with the increase of the service level of a certain channel;compared with the decentralized decision,the supply chain as a whole has higher profit in the centralized decision.(2)In a dual-channel supply chain consisting of a manufacturer and two retailers,the retailers’ cooperation strategy is influenced by the level of service and customer expectation,with the two retailers willing to cooperate with each other when the level of supply chain service is greater than customer expectation.When the service level of the supply chain is less than the customer expectation and the service level of one retailer differs significantly from the customer’s expectation,the optimal strategy is not to cooperate with another retailer.In addition,the cooperation of two retailers intensifies the competition between online and offline channels,which hurts the overall profit of the supply chain.(3)The cooperation between retailers and the manufacturer is mainly influenced by the service level and wholesale price,the manufacturer needs to provide retailers with a certain wholesale discount retailers are willing to cooperate with it.Thus a wholesale price range exists for the manufacturer and the retailers,and both parties are willing to cooperate with each other only within the price range;the cooperation between the manufacturer and the retailers intensifies the competition between the two retail channels,but enhances the overall profit of the supply chain.