基于渠道差异的生鲜零售商定价和服务策略研究

Pricing and service strategy for the fresh retailers based on channel differentiation

本文从生鲜零售的实际出发,剖析线上平台及线下实体店销售生鲜品时呈现的不同特征,以两个指标来刻画线上/线下渠道间的差异——生鲜感知度差异和价格敏感度差异,构建了带有这两个差异指标的生鲜消费者效用函数,找出了令两个渠道共存的差异指标阈值条件。基于此,本文面向同时拥有线上和线下渠道的生鲜零售商,建立引入BOPS(buy online pick-up in store线上下单线下自提)服务前、引入BOPS服务后,以及为自提的消费提供增值服务三种情形下的决策模型,对比分析对应的最优零售价、渠道间分割的需求份额以及相应利润。结果表明:BOPS服务会引导零售商降低零售价格,刺激线上渠道的需求量;并通过额外的增值服务努力,能够吸引自提顾客产生对其他产品的需求,带来利润的增加;线上/线下渠道间的差异度指标对最优决策和利润的影响不尽相同,生鲜度感知差异指标越大、价格敏感差异指标越小,生鲜零售商借由BOPS服务获得的利润增量越大。

To date,many major retailers have sold their products to consumers through multiple channels,especially online and store channels,owing to the rapid development of e-commerce.As consumers become increasingly accustomed to shopping through multiple channels,an increasing number of retailers are becoming aware of the need to integrate all channels to achieve a seamless shopping experience.Among various omnichannel strategies to integrate channels,buy-online-and-pickup-in-store(BOPS)is an important service strategy commonly observed in practice.However,the effectiveness of different cross-channel strategies largely depends on customers′reactions to the products provided on different channels.The channel differentiation appears more obvious for fresh produce,as the customers in an offline store can choose and purchase the products with the perception of real-time freshness,while online customers make orders dependent only on freshness evaluation and are more price-conscious.Thus,fresh produce customers have obvious cross-channel heterogeneity,which offers an opportunity for BOPS to be helpful in terms of profit improvement.The core factor affecting the performance of implementing BOPS lies in the pricing and service decisions for both the online and offline channels,considering customers′heterogeneity due to channel differentiation.Owing to the importance of channel differentiation for cross-channel integration retailers,this study develops the utility function for two channels with channel differentiation by introducing two difference indicators(freshness perception difference and price sensitivity difference between online and offline channels).Given the co-existence of both channels,we then obtain the threshold of these two difference indicators.Based on this,we consider three possible strategies for integrating online and offline services for fresh produce consumers-a strategy without BOPS,one with the implementation of BOPS,and one with extra service for the BOPS consumer.Under such strategies,we develop the retailer′s decision models to achieve total profitability in both channels,in which the retail price and service level are decision variables.Through the models,we obtain the optimal retail price and service level for each strategy.By comparing strategies,we examine the superiority of strategies and the application conditions of BOPS.Together with extensive numerical experiments,we explore the effect of channel differentiation indicators on the market share and corresponding revenue,which offer promising ways of channel integration for fresh produce retailers.The main results indicate that:1)BOPS can reduce the delivery cost for online order,and also provide an opportunity for fresh produce retailers to utilize different channels and realize cross-sell and cross-promotion for products.2)A fresh produce retailer would lower the retail price to promote BOPS and stimulate the demand in the offline channel.3)Through the extra service for BOPS consumers,a fresh produce retailer would attract additional customers to motivate offline demand,which further increases the total profit.4)Two-channel differentiation indicators have opposite effects on optimal price and profit,that is,a larger freshness perception difference would be suitable for highlighting the BOPS,whereas a smaller price-sensitive difference between channels is more suitable for the implementation of BOPS.4)A fresh produce retailer endeavors to increase the reliability of online channels and enhance fresh produce consumers′acceptance of the online channel,which helps to gain better performance of BOPS.The contributions of this study are mainly concentrated in three parts.First,oriented to the fresh produce retailer with both online and offline channels,we introduce two important channel differentiation indicators to distinguish between channels,thus illustrating consumer heterogeneity in channels.Second,by formulating the utility functions,we explore the threshold of these two indicators to facilitate the integration of channels.Based on this,three strategies associated with BOPS are proposed and comprehensively studied.Finally,the comparisons of the price and service decisions among strategies reveal the opposite effect of channel differentiation indicators on cross-channel integration.In addition,some insights into the implementation of BOPS for fresh product retailers enrich the research and related results concerning omni-channel retailing management.Our work is somewhat limited and can be extended in many aspects.For example,some distinctive factors(buyer retention,waiting time,and delivery cost)related to the online channel can be incorporated into the omnichannel model.The return and refund policies are also important issues in enriching the implementation of cross-channel strategies.