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

摘要： 在体验经济发展的过程中,顾客消费理念和购买模式发生了变化,更加注重在购买环境、渠道便捷性以及价格透明性等方面的体验。本文以同时开通传统线下渠道和线上渠道的零售商为研究对象,基于顾客的体验效应,分别构建了线下占优、线上占优和纳什均衡三种不同权力结构下的博弈模型。依据不同的渠道整合水平进一步建立了“线上下单,线下提货”和“线下体验,网络配送”的全渠道零售系统模型。然后分别就双渠道和全渠道的情形,探讨了不同权力结构和渠道整合水平下的决策行为,分析了各决策主体均衡解的特征。最后通过数值例子分析了渠道偏好对零售系统最优决策和绩效水平的影响。

关键词: 顾客体验, 权力结构, 全渠道, BOPS, 定价决策