关键词: 电商平台, 自有品牌, 制造商品牌, 入侵, 质量

Abstract: In the past two decades, private brands have been widely used as an important way to improve the competitiveness of retailers in the market. As a result, many e-commerce platforms have also introduced their private brands. However, the manufacturer brand products have already occupied a certain market share and established customer consistency, which causes e-commerce platforms to introduce a private brand with a lower price and quality compared to a manufacturer brand product (i.e., a low-quality private brand encroachment strategy of e-commerce platform). Interestingly, some e-commerce platforms have introduced high-quality private brands. Compared to low quality private brand encroachment, high-quality private brand encroachment can significantly increase consumer willingness to pay and enhance the bargaining power of e-commerce platforms; on the other hand, high-quality private brands also bring higher production costs. Therefore, when e-commerce platforms choose their private brand encroachment strategies, they need to balance the relationship between the quality and cost of the private brand.
It is worth noting that e-commerce platforms benefit from encroaching on market share of the manufacturer brand after introducing the private brand. However, there is controversy over the impact of e-commerce platforms introducing the private brand on manufacturers. On the one hand, introducing the private brand will encroach on the market demand of the manufacturer brand, which hurts manufacturers’ interests. On the other hand, when e-commerce platforms introduce private brands, e-commerce platforms will implement various advertising, recommendation and promotional activities to promote the sales of their private branded products. As a result, manufacturers can benefit from the private brand encroachment as a free rider. E-commerce platforms may choose different private brand encroachment strategies. It is necessary to explore the impact of different private brand encroachment strategies on manufacturers.
This paper considers three encroachment strategies of e-commerce platform: no encroachment, low-quality private brand encroachment and high-quality private brand encroachment. Then we explore the following questions: Do e-commerce platforms always choose to introduce the private brand? Does e-commerce platform’s private brand encroachment always harm the interests of the manufacturer? If the private brand encroachment strategy is detrimental to the manufacturer, which encroachment strategy causes less damage to it? To solve the above problems, we consider a supply chain composed of a manufacturer and an e-commerce platform, where consumers have quality preference for products and the e-commerce platform may introduce the private brand. Firstly, when the product quality of the private brand is an exogenous variable, we will explore the impact of encroachment decisions on the manufacturer and the conditions for achieving a win-win between the e-commerce platform and manufacturer. Secondly, when the product quality of private brand is an endogenous variable, we will explore the private brand encroachment strategies and product quality decision of e-commerce platform, and then analyze the impact of the private brand encroachment decision on the manufacturer.
The research results are shown as follows: (1)When the quality of the private brand is an exogenous variable, private brand encroachment will be beneficial for the e-commerce platform, and may be beneficial for the manufacturer under certain conditions. (2)When the quality of the private brand is an endogenous variable, the e-commerce platform will benefit from private brand encroachment that is harmful to the manufacturer. When the quality of the manufacturer brand is low (high), the introduction of the high (low) quality private brand will be more beneficial for e-commerce and less harmful for the manufacturer. (3)When the quality of the private brand is an endogenous variable and the quality of the manufacturer brand is high, if the quality cost of the product is low or the product category size is high, compared to the low quality private brand encroachment, it will be more advantageous for the e-commerce platform to introduce the high-quality private brand, which is different from the existing research result, that is, the significant quality difference between two types of the brand product is more advantageous for the e-commerce platform.

Key words: e-commerce platform, private brand, manufacturer brand, encroachment, quality