关键词: 跨渠道退货, 双渠道, 定价策略, 退货策略, 退货麻烦成本, Stackelberg博弈

Abstract: With the continuous expansion of the scale of online consumption, the shortcomings of online shopping have become more and more obvious. Only when receiving the products, consumers can determine whether the purchased products perfectly meet their expectations. Consequently, the product return has become an inevitable part of the sales process, and making product return decisionis very important for the brand image and enterprise operation of online retailers. In the context of New Retail, in order to meet the different needs of customers when facing returns, retailers have accelerated the pace of integration of online and offline channels, and realize cross-channel product return through online and offline collaboration, better and more comprehensively serving customers, as the same time, increasing their own profits. The selection of return channels is very important for retailers, and currently some companies have attempted to open cross channel return services. As is often the case, retailers may stimulate the demand of online market and earn profit by adopting a lenient return policy, such as bearing the return freight. However, free return shipping is not as common as a full refund. Faced with a situation where the actual number of product returns is high enough to threaten the enterprise’s profits, paying the return freight may further lessen the profits.
Focusing on the above concern about product return channels, this paper takes the dual-channel retailer that allows returns as the background, with the goal of maximizing its profit. Firstly, this paper constructs two different pricing decision models for unified pricing and independent pricing strategies both online and offline. Then, we model the market demand and return quantity when adopting original channel and cross-channel return strategies respectively, and solve the optimal pricing and profit of retailers. In addition to this, this paper also analyzes the factors that affect retailers’ pricing strategy and return strategy selection through numerical examples, such as consumers’ channel preference and the cost of return hassle. This article takes a retailer and several consumers as the retail scenario. Retailers sell products through both online stores and offline physical stores,and can decide whether to allow customers to return products purchased online to offline physical stores.Under the unified pricing model, retailers consider the overall interests of the two channels and determine the optimal pricing strategy through cooperation. At this point, the relationship between the optimal pricing of retailers and customer channel preferences is influenced by the return rate and return hassle cost of each channel. Therefore, when choosing pricing strategies, retailers should pay attention to return rates and return hassle costs. The setting of the optimal channel price should be proportional to the degree of customer preference for the channel, coordinating the prices of both online and offline channels to achieve a win-win situation for both channels and expand the overall profit. However, under the independent pricing model, each channel generates fierce competition based on the principle of maximizing its own profits, and the pricing decision-making power is related to customer channel preferences.Given the hassle cost of returns, when the customer channel preference is obvious, the profit of retailers adopting independent pricing strategy is greater than that adopting unified pricing strategy. Retailers should choose reasonable channel competition strategies based on market conditions. When customers have a high degree of preference for a certain channel, retailers should encourage competition between the two channels instead of adopting a unified pricing strategy. That is, when the proportion of consumers in a certain channel in the market has a significant advantage, retailers should adopt independent pricing strategies, otherwise adopt a unified pricing strategy.Under the independent pricing model,when customers prefer online channels, they should adopt a cross-channel return policy; When customers prefer offline channels, they should adopt the original channel return policy. Furthermore, retailers should choose reasonable pricing and return strategies considering customer channel preference and return hassle cost to maximize their profits.
These results of the research are not only a supplement to the return strategy of dual-channel retailers, but also extend the theoretical model through numerical examples. It is helpful for dual-channel retailers that allow returns to set a reasonable return strategy and optimal pricing strategy. It provides inspiration and decision support for relevant practices of enterprises under different market conditions. Further analysis can be conducted on the impact of the BOPS method or the situation that customers return products at the pickup point on the optimal pricing, return strategy, and profit of retailers. In addition, customers can observe and compare the prices and quality of products from two channels before purchasing, and then choose which channel to purchase products. This is also a future research issue.

Key words: cross-channel returns, dual-channel, pricing strategy, return policy, hassle cost of return, Stackelberg game