Abstract: This article investigates the channel choice of the electronic retailer(e-retailer)who is a retail platform owner—reselling or open the online platform, when consumers are delivery-time sensitive and have private information. Reselling means that the platform owner first purchases from the manufacturer and then resells to end consumers. Opening platform allows the manufacturer to access end-customers directly, but the manufacturer should pay a percentage to the platform owner. When the e-retailer chooses reselling, we analyze which quotation mode: UQM(uniform quotation mode)or DQM(differentiated quotation mode)is more profitable for the e-retailer if the purchasing price is exogenous. When the e-retailer chooses opening his platform, we analyze how the percentage fee affects the manufacturer’s quotation mode if the fee is exogenous. The results show that: (1)the e-retailer may choose reselling when the purchasing price is high; (2)the e-retailer may decide to open platform when the purchasing price is low and the fee is low. In addition, we discuss the influence of customer types and the private delay cost rate to the optimal channel choice of the e-retailer through numerical experiments.

Key words: channel, information asymmetry, quotation mode, lead-time sensitive

摘要： 在顾客对产品的交货期敏感及敏感度信息私有的背景下,研究一个拥有网络零售平台电子零售商的一个产品渠道决策——自营(又称自主销售)或开放平台(又称外租平台给制造商直销)。求解了电子零售商自营时差别定价和统一定价策略下的最优激励策略(价格与交货期的设定),并分析了开放平台时收益分享比例对制造商定价及交货期策略的影响。通过比较自营和开放平台时电子零售商的最大收益,给出电子零售商最优的渠道决策流程图。研究结果表明,当产品采购成本高时,电子零售商将采取自营;当采购成本低且收益分享比例低时,电子零售商将开放平台。最后,借助数值实验分析了顾客类型和私有的延迟成本率对渠道决策的影响。

关键词: 渠道, 信息不对称, 定价策略, 交货期敏感