双渠道供应链两阶段信息甄别策略

Two-stage screening strategies in a dual-channel supply chain

本文研究了当制造商委托一个同时经营线上、线下渠道的零售商在两周期内进行产品销售,且市场需求信息为零售商的私有信息时,制造商的信息甄别策略。本文对比分析了完全承诺合约和防重新谈判合约下制造商和零售商博弈决策以及信息激励效果。研究发现,当零售商连续两期披露市场类型为低时,制造商会提供给零售商一个比第一期更高的定价。当第二期市场类型为低(高)时,披露过高类型市场信号的零售商可以获得比披露过低类型市场信号的零售商更高的限价(信息租金/利润)。在一定条件下,完全承诺合约与防重新谈判合约不分离。当两个合约分离且前期信号为低时,第二期高类型零售商可以在防重新谈判合约下获得更高的信息租金,当前期信号为高时,第二期高类型零售商在两种合约下获得的信息租金相同,第一期高类型零售商在防重新谈判合约下也可以获得更高的信息租金。一定条件下,防重新谈判合约可以减少实体店售价向下扭曲的程度,即与完全承诺合约对比,防重新谈判合约对制造商更优。

To better cater to the growing needs of the rapidly evolving market,and to improve the shoppers′experience,an increasing number of retailers,including Suning and Jingdong,are adopting the combination of online and offline sales through incorporating online stores to their traditional brick-and-mortar locations or adding physical stores to their online channels.Retailers can get in touch with customers more effectively and garner abundant first-hand sales data when running dual channels,helping them gain better knowledge and comprehension of market demand.Meanwhile,manufacturers can establish the market faster and more smoothly by delegating products distribution to dual-channel operators.However,manufacturers cannot obtain accurate market demand in this scenario.In supply chain practice,the information between retailers and manufacturers is asymmetric;retailers may conceal information to serve their purposes,thereby harming the manufacturers′profit margins.To address this,manufacturers need to design rational incentive mechanisms to achieve screening.Moreover,the information between manufacturers and retailers may be different due to the extension of the cooperation period.Henceforth,the incentive mechanisms need to change accordingly.When the cooperation period is extended,manufacturers can obtain more information about retailers and the market in light of their previous strategies.Given this situation,manufacturers may have an incentive to amend contracts through renegotiation,as opposed to cooperating under previous full-commitment contracts.However,renegotiation may entail costs.Thus,an anti-renegotiation contract is an alternative for screening besides the full-commitment contract.Therefore,it is necessary to investigate the two-stage screening strategies in a dual-channel supply chain,and it is also vital to identify the contract yielding a better incentive effect.A two-stage screening model of a dual-channel supply chain was built,in which a manufacturer(he)distributes his products to a retailer(she)who owns and operates both online and offline channels.The retailer can provide experience service in the offline store,while the online store can free ride the experience service.This strategy can optimize demand to some extent.Market demand is the confidential information of the retailer,and the manufacturer provides an extensive list of transfer payment-price contracts to realize screening.This paper investigated the two-stage strategies of the manufacturer and the retailer in cases of symmetric and asymmetric information,respectively.In the case whereby information is asymmetric,we analyzed and compared how the full-commitment contract and the anti-renegotiation contract affect the strategies of the manufacturer,the retailer,and the information incentive strategy.In this model,the retailer obtains market demand information initially,and the manufacturer only has prior assumptions regarding market demand.In period one,the manufacturer provides a long-term list of contracts to the retailer for both periods,clearly delineating the transfer payments and offline prices.The retailer decides to accept or refuse the contracts.If the retailer agrees with the contracts,she needs to determine the first-period service level and the online price.Then the first-period output is realized,and the transfer payment is effected.At the beginning of period two,the manufacturer updates his beliefs according to the retailer′s behavior in the previous period.The retailer subsequently decides the second-period service level and offline price,and the second-period output is realized,and transfer payment is subsequently effected.The following conclusions were drawn from this study.When information is symmetric,the contracts provided by the manufacturer are related to the current market demand status only.In other words,the previous market demand state does not influence the existing contracts.The manufacturer can set a higher transfer payment and offline price when market demand is high.Moreover,the offline price is always higher than the online price,and the offline price is more susceptible to market demand.However,when information is asymmetric,the manufacturer needs to distort the offline price downwards for screening if market demand is low.When the retailer discloses a low market demand in both periods,the manufacturer will offer the retailer a higher price in period two than that in period one.When the market demand in the second period is a low(high)state,the retailer who previously discloses a high demand type can obtain a higher price(information rent/profit)than the retailer who previously discloses a low demand type.Under certain conditions,the full-commitment contract and anti-renegotiation contract are identical.When these two contracts are separated,and the history signal is low,the high-type retailer can get higher information rent in period two under the anti-renegotiation contract.When the history signal is high,the high-type retailer can get the same information rent under the two contracts in period two and get higher information rent under the anti-renegotiation contract.Compared with the full-commitment contract,the anti-renegotiation contract can circumvent the downward distortion of the offline price when some conditions are satisfied.In short,the anti-renegotiation contract is more beneficial for the manufacturer.Our work contributes to the supply chain literature regarding the incentive mechanism of a dual-channel supply chain under information asymmetry.Further study can extend the two-stage game to multi-stages to investigate the long-term incentive strategies of a dual-channel supply chain.