Abstract: With the continuous development of e-commerce, on the one hand, more and more small and medium-sized enterprises (SME) are selling their products through e-commerce platforms and market competition is intensifying; on the other hand, these SME often have financial constraints in production, thus causing a break in the supply chain, which seriously affects the profitability of the various participants in the supply chain. There are already many e-commerce platforms trying to provide financing services for these SME, such as Alibaba’s Aliloan and JingBaoBei of JD. The aim is to transform the uncontrollable risks of individual enterprises into controllable risks of the supply chain as a whole, so as to achieve an improvement in the overall efficiency of the supply chain.
Based on the above background, this paper establishes a two-level platform supply chain consisting of a capital-constrained manufacturer and a well-funded e-commerce platform. By building a Stackelberg game model, the optimal output of the manufacturer and the equilibrium financing decision of the manufacturer and the e-commerce platform under different operation modes are derived, and the differences between different operation modes of the e-commerce platform are analyzed through a cross-sectional comparison. A comparative analysis shows that the optimal output of bank financing is always smaller than the optimal output of platform guaranteed financing, while the optimal output of platform direct financing has a relative size with conditions compared to the optimal output of bank financing and platform guaranteed financing. And e-commerce platforms have similarities in their choice of financing modes under different operating models, except that manufacturers are encouraged to choose bank financing when the production cost per unit is higher but the revenue per unit of product is lower, otherwise they are more inclined to choose direct financing, so that e-commerce platforms can adjust the financing rate more flexibly to obtain higher revenue; manufacturers prefer guarantor financing and direct financing under different operating models. Manufacturers prefer guarantor financing and direct financing under the different operating models, as both methods share a portion of the risk of default with the e-commerce platform, thereby increasing the manufacturer’s incentive to produce; from the perspective of the supply chain as a whole, there is really not much difference between the different operating models, as it is the uncertainty of market demand and the structure of trade finance that are the fundamental factors determining the revenue of e-commerce platforms and manufacturers, rather than the operating model.
This paper focuses on analyzing the optimal choices of various participants in the financing process, including operational decisions for SME and financing model selection for e-commerce platforms, starting from different operational modes of e-commerce platforms. The article provides a precise analysis of the advantages and disadvantages of bank financing, platform guarantee financing, and platform direct financing, answering how SME and e-commerce platforms can selectively choose financing models in different situations to maximize their profits. Through a comparative analysis of different financing methods used by e-commerce platforms under different operational modes, the article concludes with some common findings, indicating that e-commerce platforms offering direct financing as one of the options enriches the financing choices for SME and plays a positive role in their development.
The main innovations and contributions of this research are as follows: a clear analysis of the advantageous ranges of different financing models through an analysis of production costs and financing interest rates. A clear analysis of the optimal choices for SME through bank financing, guarantee financing, and e-commerce platform direct financing in different situations. A clear analysis of e-commerce platform preferences for different operational modes. Future research can expand in several directions, including: The use of various distribution functions, such as normal distribution, binomial distribution, and Poisson distribution, to test the robustness of the results obtained in this study. Exploring the impact of dual-channel supply chain financing for e-commerce platforms operating in a hybrid model, combining both agency and resale models, like platforms such as JD that act as both sellers and third-party sales channels. Investigating the positive influence of e-commerce platforms as core companies in the supply chain, and providing direct financing to manufacturers facing capital constraints upstream in a dual-channel supply chain financing scenario. Examining the impact of procurement prices and commission rates as exogenous variables on e-commerce platforms, and considering the influence of these variables in both resale and agency models, while assuming fixed production costs.

Key words: platform supply chain, financing models, bank financing, platform guarantee financing, platform direct financing

摘要： 本文建立了一个由资金受限的制造商与资金充足的电子商务平台所组成的二级平台供应链,通过建立斯塔克伯格博弈模型,得出了代理模式下制造商的最优产量以及制造商和电子商务平台各自的均衡融资决策。通过对比分析发现,银行融资的最优产量总是小于平台担保融资的最优产量,而平台直接融资的最优产量相比银行融资和平台担保融资的最优产量存在带条件的相对大小。电子商务平台在不同运营模式下对融资模式的选择具有相似性,除了在单位生产成本较高而单位产品收益较低时会鼓励制造商选择银行融资,除此之外都会更倾向于选择直接融资,这样电商平台可以更加灵活地调整融资利率以获取更高的收益;制造商则更倾向于担保融资和直接融资,因为这两种融资方式能很好地将违约风险分摊给电商平台,从而提高制造商的生产积极性。

关键词: 平台供应链, 融资策略, 银行融资, 平台担保融资, 平台直接融资