Abstract: In the omnichannel marketing process, offline retailers carry out advertising campaigns to attract new consumers into the market, and there is a free-rider phenomenon among some consumers in the new consumer market, who will choose to buy online or buy online and pick up in-store (BOPS) channels after being informed of product advertising campaigns offline. However, this phenomenon inevitably leads to the loss of offline consumers and wasting the advertising cost of offline retailers. Therefore, considering the influence of consumer free-riding behavior, how to make effective advertising and pricing strategies to achieve omnichannel revenue coordination is a critical issue in current omnichannel marketing decisions. The existing research on omnichannel advertising and coordination strategies that consider the effect of free-riding behavior is still lacking. In addition, research on omnichannel has mainly focused on omnichannel business operated by a single retailer; or a multi-entity cooperative structure formed by the manufacturer opening an online platform and the retailer opening an offline store. But in practice, online platforms such as JD and Tmall Supermarket often cooperate with offline physical stores to provide omnichannel services. There is a less exploration of omnichannel coordination strategies by which online and offline retailers cooperate horizontally to provide BOPS services. Therefore, this paper explores the issue of omnichannel advertising and coordination based on the omnichannel retail system in which online and offline retailers cooperate to provide BOPS service. We first consider the influence of consumers' free-riding behavior on the market demand of online, offline, and BOPS channels, and construct the advertising and pricing decision models of the online and offline retailers in the centralized and decentralized decision modes respectively. By comparing the optimal advertising and pricing strategies under decentralized decision-making, this paper takes the optimal strategies under centralized decision-making as the benchmark, and puts forward a BOPS-based omnichannel two-part revenue coordination model. The model is checked by the study.
The result shows that, under the centralized decision making, when consumer preference for online channel is greater or smaller, the omnichannel should increase or decrease the prices of online and offline products and raise or lower offline advertising as the proportion of free-riding consumers increases; when consumer preference for online channel is below the threshold, the consumer free-riding behavior will have a negative impact on the total profit of the omnichannel. The total profit of omnichannel under centralized decision-making is higher than the decentralized decision-making, and the decentralized decision-making model cannot achieve omnichannel profit coordination. The numerical example shows that as the proportion of free-riding consumers increases, the total omnichannel profit decreases in the centralized and decentralized decision-making, suggesting that consumer free-riding behavior reduces omnichannel profitability to some extent. Through the two-part revenue coordination mechanism, the profits of online and offline retailers can be higher than the profits of the decentralized decision-making, and the total profit of the omnichannel can reach the profit level of the centralized decision-making, achieving a win-win effect. Under the two-part revenue coordination strategy, when consumers have a greater preference for the online channel, as the proportion of free-riding consumers increases, both online and offline product prices increase in the omnichannel, and then the offline retailer is willing to increase advertising to expand the consumer market and set a larger commission for the offline pickup in the BOPS channel to balance the loss caused by consumer free-riding behavior. The research results provide interesting theoretical suggestions for advertising and coordination decisions in omnichannel where free-riding behavior exists.

Key words: free-riding behavior, advertising, two-part revenue coordination mechanism, omnichannel

摘要： 考虑全渠道广告营销存在消费者搭便车现象,本文基于线上与线下零售商合作提供BOPS(Buy Online and Pick up in Sore)服务的全渠道零售系统,探讨存在消费者搭便车行为影响的全渠道广告投放与协调问题。通过对比分散决策下的最优广告与定价策略,以集中决策下的最优广告与价格策略为基准,提出了基于BOPS的全渠道两部收益协调决策模型,并对模型进行数值算例。研究发现:(1)集中决策下,当消费者对线上渠道偏好较大(较小)时,随着消费者搭便车比例的增加,全渠道应提高(降低)线上与线下产品价格,并加大(降低)线下广告的投放力度;(2)集中决策下全渠道总利润高于分散决策的全渠道利润之和,分散决策模式并不能实现全渠道利润协调;(3)通过两部收益协调机制可实现线上、线下零售商的利润均高于分散决策时的利润,并能使全渠道总利润达到集中决策的利润水平,实现双赢的效果。研究结果可为存在搭便车行为影响的全渠道零售商广告及协调决策提供了理论指导建议。

关键词: 搭便车行为, 广告营销, 两部收益协调机制, 全渠道