关键词: 顾客体验, 权力结构, 全渠道, BOPS, 定价决策

Abstract: In the process of experience economy development, customer consumption concepts and purchasing patterns have changed, and more emphasis has been placed on experiences in terms of purchasing environment, channel convenience, and price transparency. Retail enterprises providing experiential services can stimulate customers’ purchasing desire to a certain extent, but they usually incur additional investment costs, thereby affecting the pricing strategy of products. With the iterative upgrading of retail channels, the power structure between online and offline channels has also shown diversified characteristics, with both online and offline dominant power structures, as well as online and offline power structures that are evenly matched. Nowadays, unlike dual channel and multi-channel distribution models, many retailers integrate channels to enhance the value of customer experience and overall operational efficiency. “Buy Online and Pick up Store” (BOPS) is the most common omnichannel retail method, which can achieve user traffic conversion between different channels, share inventory information, and meet consumers’ one-stop shopping needs.
In the omnichannel model, considering the impact of differences in customer experience and power structure on channel integration strategies, it is urgent to address whether channel integration can continuously enhance customer experience value and bring higher profitability to retail enterprises. This paper takes a retailer that simultaneously opens traditional offline and online channels as the object of study, and establishes game models based on customer experience effects under three different power structures: offline dominance, online dominance, and Nash equilibrium. Based on different levels of channel integration, the omnichannel retail system models of “buy-online-and-pick-up-in-store” and “offline-experience-and-online-logistics-distribution” have been further established. Then, the decision-making behavior under different power structures and channel integration levels is explored for both dual channel and omnichannel scenarios, and the characteristics of equilibrium solutions for each decision-making subject are analyzed. Finally, numerical examples are utilized to analyze the impact of channel preferences on the optimal decision and performance of retail systems.
The main research work and conclusions are summarized as follows: When consumers have a moderate preference for online purchasing behavior, they can appropriately increase the product pricing of the omnichannel retail system, and at this time, the omnichannel model has a more profit advantage. When consumers have a high preference for online channels, the pricing and experience investment of the deeply integrated omnichannel BOPS-PLUS model should be lower than those of the BOPS model. When consumers have a higher acceptance of online shopping, a higher experience factor, and a lower perceived value from customers, the BOPS-PLUS model has more advantages, and fully integrating channels is beneficial for retail enterprises.
The management implications of this paper are as follows: First, decision makers in retail enterprises should implement omnichannel strategies when consumers have a moderate level of online acceptance. In this situation, they can obtain the highest sales profit on a larger scale while effectively controlling risks. When consumers have low online acceptance, integrating channels will not be the best choice for retail enterprises. Second, channel integration does not always bring profit growth to retail enterprises, and multiple factors need to be considered comprehensively. When meeting a certain market environment, fully integrating channels can satisfy consumers’ expectations of being “cheap” with price advantages, and retail enterprises can also obtain higher profits, thus achieving a win-win between consumers and retail enterprises. Then, in retail practice, the BOPS approach is more practical than the deeply integrated BOPS-PLUS approach. Because it does not require real-time attention to changes in consumer market information, it can fully leverage the advantages of channel integration, promote cooperation between online and offline channels, and bring new market share and profit growth.

Key words: customer experience, power structure, omnichannel, BOPS, pricing decision