关键词: 平台供应链, 入驻模式, 过度自信, 感知利润

Abstract: With the rapid development of platform economy, consumers, either young or old, have been embracing online shopping. Due to the increasing number of online consumers, both the upstart and leading manufacturers have been jumping on e-commerce platforms to sell their products to consumers. When manufacturers enter an e-commerce platform, an increasingly important issue is whether their products should be sold through the agency selling or the reselling mode. Under the agency selling mode, the e-commerce platform acts as an intermediary, charging a percentage of commission to the manufacturer and allowing the manufacturer to sell the product directly to the consumers (e.g. manufacturers open flagship stores on e-commerce platforms). Under the reselling mode, the e-commerce platform plays the role of a retailer, wholesaling products from the manufacturer and reselling them to consumers (e.g. self-operated flagship store of e-commerce platform). The key difference between the two modes is that the manufacturer charges the retail price under the agency selling mode and the e-commerce platform sets the retail price under the reselling mode.
In contrast with the extant entry mode selection that typically considers completely rational manufacturers, the entry strategy of overconfident manufacturers is explored. Overconfidence, distinguished from complete rationality, is a psychological term that refers to people showing excessive optimism and confidence in their own abilities and predictions about the future. According to the psychological studies, the psychological trait of overconfidence is common in humans. Furthermore, economic research also confirms that business managers are more likely to exhibit overconfident behavior. In fact, many important business decisions, especially about entering an existing market, are made under the impact of the behavior of overconfidence. For example, when manufacturers enter the online consumer market, they are often overconfident about the size of the market for their products. In this context, the entry mode selection of overconfident manufacturers settling in the e-commerce platform is well worth exploring.
Aiming at a platform supply chain consisting of a manufacturer and an e-commerce platform, we propose the case in which the manufacturer is overconfident in the market size, establish the condition under which the platform offers both the agency selling and reselling modes, and study the impact of overconfidence on the mode of manufacturers entering the e-commerce platform. The results show that: (1)If and only if both the platform's commission ratio and the manufacturer's overconfidence are sufficiently low, the platform will offer both the agency selling and reselling modes for the overconfident manufacturer to choose. (2)When the commission ratio is relatively high (low), the overconfident manufacturer will choose the reselling (agency selling) mode; when the commission ratio is moderate, the overconfident manufacturer will choose the reselling (agency selling) mode if its overconfidence is relatively high (low). (3)The mode selected by the overconfident manufacturer can be either a win-win, win-lose, or lose-lose scenario, however the mode selected by the completely rational manufacturer cannot be a lose-lose scenario. (4)By comparing the mode choice strategies of perfectly rational and overconfident manufacturers, it is found that perfectly rational manufacturers can always enter e-commerce platforms, while overconfident manufacturers may not be able to enter e-commerce platforms with larger commission ratios; as the commission ratio decreases, the optimal mode of manufacturers' entry into e-commerce platforms is shifted from reselling to agency selling, and the bar for shifting to a different mode is higher for overconfident manufacturers. That is, if and only if both the platform's commission ratio is moderate and the manufacturer's overconfidence is sufficiently high, the overconfident and completely rational manufacturers will choose a different mode to enter the e-commerce platform. Finally, a numerical simulation suggests that the perceived profit of the overconfident manufacturer is always higher than the real profit it obtains, and their deviation degree is higher (lower) under the reselling (agency selling) mode.
Future research could explore two main directions: (1)extending the single-manufacturer framework to multiple manufacturers to examine the entry mode selection for the entrant; (2)investigating manufacturer over-pessimism as a counterpart to the current overconfidence analysis.

Key words: platform supply chain, entry mode, overconfidence, perceived profit