关键词: 供应链, 捐赠, 电商平台, 销售模式

Abstract: Charitable donations not only are an important way for companies to fulfill their social responsibilities, but also effectively influence consumers' choices and evaluations of their products, enhancing the company's social reputation and value. For example, in the “7.20” extremely heavy rainstorm event in Henan Province in 2021, ERKE's “bankrupted donation” to the disaster area ignited the network, and its sales performance increased dozens of times. At the same time, with the rapid development of e-commerce, more and more manufacturers rely on e-commerce platforms to sell products through distribution or agency selling models. Under different sales models of e-commerce platforms, on the one hand, the pricing and revenue models of manufacturers and e-commerce platforms have changed. On the other hand, the combined effect of donation behavior, leading to increased costs for manufacturers but increased sales, has a new impact on their pricing decisions and profits, making the operational strategies of the supply chain more complex and challenging. For example, businesses on JD's “Love Dongdong” platform support public welfare in the form of sales donations. Despite the increase in unit product cost expenditure, businesses have received higher platform search traffic and product demand. Over 36000 JD businesses have opened “Love Dongdong” and donated over 25 million yuan. Therefore, studying the operational decisions of manufacturers and e-commerce platforms under donation behavior is of great significance.
This paper focuses on a supply chain system composed of two manufacturers of alternative products and an e-commerce sales platform. The following models are considered for selling products: (1)The e-commerce platform distribution model, where two manufacturers sell their products to e-commerce platforms at a certain wholesale price, and the e-commerce platform determines the retail prices of the two products after obtaining product ownership.(2)The e-commerce platform agency selling model, where the e-commerce platform does not have the ownership and pricing rights of the products, but helps manufacturers sell products based on the prices given by the two manufacturers and earns profits by charging a unit product sales commission. (3)The e-commerce platform hybrid sales model, which refers to one manufacturer distributing products through e-commerce platforms and another manufacturer selling products on a commission basis through e-commerce platforms.
First of all, the paper solves the equilibrium solution of the game through the backwards-induction under different e-commerce platform sales modes. Then, it analyzes the impact of donation levels and product substitutability on supply chain operation decisions and profits under different e-commerce platform sales models. Finally, it compares and analyzes the profit levels of the two manufacturers and e-commerce platforms under different e-commerce platform sales modes, and discusses the preferences of the two manufacturers for different e-commerce platform sales models. The research results show that: (1)Under different e-commerce platform sales modes, the wholesale prices, retail prices, and agency prices of the two manufacturers' products gradually increase with an increase in donation levels. However, an increase or decrease in profits of the two manufacturers and the total profit of the supply chain are comprehensively influenced by the level of corporate donations and the sensitivity of consumers to corporate donations. (2)Under certain conditions, an increase in substitutability between two products can increase the profits of some enterprises and the total profit of the supply chain. (3)When the sales commission shared by e-commerce platforms is relatively high, both manufacturers will prefer the e-commerce platform distribution model. Otherwise, they prefer to choose e-commerce platform agency selling or e-commerce platform hybrid sales models.
This paper investigates the operational strategy of two manufacturers and a single e-commerce platform under donation behavior, and future research can further expand to the operational strategies of multiple manufacturers and multiple e-commerce platforms. In addition, this paper only considers the impact of upstream manufacturers' donation behavior on supply chain operation strategies. In the future, further research can be conducted on supply chain operation strategies when both upstream manufacturers and downstream e-commerce platforms make charitable donations.

Key words: supply chain, donation, e-commerce platform, sales model