Product-specified dual-channel retail management with significant consumer service

Abstract

If the product has been decided for the retail industry, single-channel retail management is enough to obtain profit for the retail management. Though a single-channel is enough, a dual-channel may provide much more benefit than a single-channel. If the single-product is to be specified, then a specific type of dual-channel can be improvised for that. A product-specific dual-channel strategy of a manufacturing firm is observed in this study for consumer non-durable goods. The manufacturing firm utilizes technical support to provide essential consumer services to consumers for non-durable goods. As consumer non-durable goods are fast consuming products, consumers buy these products more than once within a certain duration. This makes the consumer non-durable goods is an essential products within that certain duration. Due to multiple usage within a certain duration, consumers prefers to choose non-durable goods based on the quality and price of those products. The global maximum profit of the dual-channel is found by analytic method and established by numerical solutions. Results prove that internet of things-based blockchain essential consumer service increases the total profit of the manufacturing firm by 29.12% than no essential consumer services-based manufacturing firm. Six numerical experiments and four special cases are provided to establish the theoretical model. The sensitivity analysis is performed using profit increment. Essential consumer service is the most sensitive to the total profit of the manufacturing firm whereas the holding cost is the second most sensitive parameter. More increment in holding cost causes profit to decrease by 16.98%.