Settlement Selection Strategic Analysis for Self-Operated E-Commerce Platforms under Market Competition

Abstract

This paper focuses on the settlement selection strategic analysis for self-operated e-commerce platforms on hybrid e-commerce platforms under market competition. Taking factors such as the market share, price competition, commission, and customer loyalty into account, a multi-leader–follower game model with the platforms as leaders and the manufacturers as followers is established. Then, we solve the model with the help of some mathematical techniques and describe some numerical experiments to analyze settlement strategies for the self-operated platforms and their impact on other members in the network. The numerical results reveal the following revelations: a lower commission rate is more suitable for the self-operated platforms; once the commission rates are determined, the self-operated platforms prefer to settle in the hybrid platforms under lower medium price competition; when the price competition is fierce, as customer loyalty increases, the self-operated platforms should settle with a low market share; if the self-operated platforms settle in the hybrid platforms, then a higher price competition is advantageous for all members and can facilitate supply chain coordination.