直销渠道开通的情形下制造商与电商平台合约选择的研究

理论界认为代售合约具有明显的消除双重边际效应的作用,许多制造商和电商平台选择签订代售合约,但是也有制造商和电商平台选择了批发合约。本文以在线销售系统为背景,研究了直销渠道开通的情形下制造商和电商平台合约的选择。通过研究发现,制造商和电商平台并不是总偏好批发合约或代售合约,并且存在一个帕累托改进区域;虽然制造商在电商平台上有网络销售渠道,但是制造商会保留原有的直销渠道;对于电商平台来说,收益分配系数并不是越大越好;代售合约虽然能够消除双重边际效应,但在代售合约下,整个在线销售系统的效率并不总是最高的。另外,随着直销渠道的效率增加,制造商会先降低批发价格,然后再增加批发价格;与以往的研究结论不同,代售合约下电商平台的市场销售价格并不总是最小的。以上的结论其实都是批发合约下的直销渠道和代售合约下的电商平台在缓解双重边际效应方面的不同作用带来的。

The research on the contract choice between the manufacturer and the e-commerce platform in the presence of direct channel

With the rise of online retailing,two popular forms of distribution contracts used by e-commerce platforms are the wholesale contract and the agency contract.Under the wholesale contract,e-commerce platforms purchase products from upstream manufacturers for a wholesale price,and then determine retail prices for consumers.For example,BestBuy and Zappos adopt the wholesale contract.Under agency contract,manufacturers sell their products directly to online consumers by paying platform usage fee to e-commerce platforms.This contract has been widely embraced,for example,Taobao in china and Flipkart in India.Although both contracts are employed,different distribution contracts lead to different channel efficiency.Under the former one,the manufacturer sets the wholesale price,followed by the e-commerce platform setting the retail price,which leads to the problem of double marginalization.Under the latter one,the manufacturer sets the retail price,which reduces the problem of double marginalization.Therefore,the agency contract is more efficient than the wholesale contract.However,the manufacturer must pay platform usage fee to the ecommerce platform under the agency contract.So,the choice of the contract between the manufacturer and the e-commerce platform needs the deeper understanding.In addition,many manufacturers sell products through not only the e-commerce platform,but also the direct channel.In the direct channel,the manufacturer directly sells products to end consumers,which can mitigate the double-marginalization effect caused by the wholesale contract.If one manufacturer sets a direct channel,which contract should it use?In other words,how the direct channel affects the choice of the contract between the manufacturer and the e-commerce platform?Does the increased platform usage fee always bring benefits with the e-commerce platform?Does the manufacturer always benefit from the direct channel?Under which contract is the supply chain more efficient?Motivated by that,we consider a supply chain,in which one manufacturer sells products through not only the direct channel,but also the e-commerce platform channel.In the e-commerce platform channel,the manufacturer may choose the wholesale contract or the agency contract.We use multistage game to study the firms’equilibrium decisions.Under the wholesale contract,the manufacturer first sets a wholesale price,and then the manufacturer and the e-commerce platform set the retail price,respectively.Under the agency contract,the manufacturer sets the direct price and the agency price,respectively.By a game-theoretic approach,we gain the following results.In the beginning,comparing the e-commerce platform’s equilibrium payoffs under the agency contract with that under the wholesale contract,we get the conditions under which the agency contract is preferred or the wholesale is preferred by the manufacturer.When the platform fee rate is large,the manufacturer always prefers the wholesale contract.And when the platform fee rate is small,the manufacturer prefers the agency contract(the wholesale contract)if the discount coefficient is small(large).Similarly,we can attain the conditions under which the agency contract is preferred or the wholesale is preferred by the e-commerce platform.When the platform fee rate is large,the e-commerce platform always chooses the agency contract.And when the platform fee rate is small,the e-commerce platform chooses the agency contract(the wholesale contract)if the discount coefficient is large(small).Therefore,we can achieve a Pareto improvement zone,in which both the manufacturer and the e-commerce platform prefer the agency contract to the wholesale contract.Next,we examine whether the manufacturer should introduce the direct channel when it sells products through the e-commerce platform channel.The result indicates that the manufacturer always benefits the direct channel regardless of the agency contract or the wholesale contract.The reason is that the direct channel can alleviate the double marginalization effect under the wholesale contract,and in face of the threat of the direct channel,the e-commerce platform will decrease the platform usage fee.And then,we study how the profits of the e-commerce platform depend on the platform fee rate.Generally,the more the platform fee rate is,the more profits the e-commerce platform can get.However,we achieve different conclusions.When the discount coefficient is small,the e-commerce platform is better off as the platform fee rate becomes larger.But when the discount coefficient is large,the e-commerce platform is worse off as the platform fee rate becomes larger.The reason is that when the platform fee rate is quite large,the manufacturer will increase the retailing quantity of the direct channel,and then decrease the retailing quantity of the ecommerce platform channel.Finally,we also compare the efficiency of the online retailing system under the agency contract with that under the wholesale contract.We find that the agency contract makes the online retailing system higher efficient than the wholesale contract when the discount coefficient is small,otherwise,vise versa.The reason is that the direct channel alleviates the double marginalization effect if they adopt the wholesale contract,but the direct channel decreases the efficiency of the online retailing system under the agency contract.