关键词: 权力结构, 早分配, 晚分配, 模式选择

Abstract: Probabilistic selling is a relatively novel sales method in recent years, which is widely used in industries such as retail, aviation, and tourism. For example, Taobao and JD.com use “lucky bags”, combining clothing or jewelry products with probabilistic products for sale, and consumers obtain the information such as product images and colors after they receive the products; travel agencies combine hotels of the same level with probabilistic products, and consumers can only know the specific hotel name after arriving at their destination. Probabilistic selling is mainly divided into two modes based on the timing of allocation. Mode 1: enterprises sell probabilistic products in the early stage of sales, such as LEGO’s “lottery” and MR WISH lucky boxes, which is called early distribution probabilistic selling model. Mode 2: enterprises only sells existing products in the early stage of sales, and after the demand of existing products is revealed, enterprises sell probabilistic products in the later stage, which is called late allocation probabilistic selling model. Compared with other sales methods, probabilistic selling plays a more significant role in expanding product sales, segmenting markets, balancing supply, pricing differentially, and weakening market uncertainty.
In the process of supply chain operation, when the status of upstream and downstream enterprises is different, the operation of the supply chain will change. Most of the traditional supply chains are dominated by upstream enterprises, which play a leading role in the supply chain. However, as the market changes from the seller’s market to the buyer’s market, more and more retail enterprises occupy a dominant position in the supply chain, such as Wal Mart, Carrefour, etc. Therefore, there are three different power structures in today’s market, namely, upstream dominance, downstream dominance, and balance of power between upstream and downstream. From the current research on probabilistic selling, firstly, there is less attention paid to the selection of early and late distribution probabilistic selling model, which is the primary problem that enterprises must solve when implementing probabilistic selling. Secondly, when studying probabilistic selling problems, the influence of supply chain power structure is rarely considered. In view of this, this article conducts research on the probabilistic selling model selection of retailer under different power structures, mainly solving the following two problems: (1)From the perspective of product mix proportion and consumer sensitivity to incomplete product matching, revealing the condition for retailers to choose early and late distribution probabilistic selling model. (2)Comparing the probabilistic selling operation of early and late distribution under different power structures, and identifying the differences in the probabilistic selling model chosen under different power structures.
Through the above analysis, it can be found that: when probabilistic selling is used in supply chain, for the member enterprises, no matter whether in the different power structures or choosing different probabilistic selling modes, there will be difference in product price. In addition, from the perspective of mode selection, the higher the sensitivity of consumer to product mismatch, the more likely the retailer will choose the late distribution probabilistic sale mode under its own dominant power, and the less the other two power structures. The change of the probability product mix ratio also has an impact on the mode selection, and the degree of impact will be different under different power structures. The main drawback of this article is that the model assumes that consumers are completely rational, while in reality, due to the uncertainty of consumer purchasing probabilistic products, there may be certain behaviors such as expected regret and loss aversion, which may affect retailers’ choice of probabilistic selling models. This will be the further research direction.

Key words: power structure; early distribution; late distribution; mode selection