Abstract
The internet has provided a new means for manufacturers to reach consumers. On the background of the widespread multichannel sales in China, based on a literature review of the service game and multichannel supply chain, this paper builds a multichannel dynamic service game model where the retailer operates an offline channel and the manufacturer operates an online channel and offers customers the option to buy online and pick up from the retailer’s store (BOPS). The manufacturer and the retailer take maximizing the channel profits as their business objectives and make channel service game under optimal pricing. We carry on theoretical analysis of the model and perform numerical simulations from the perspective of entropy theory, game theory, and chaotic dynamics. The results show that the stability of the system will weaken with the increase in service elasticity coefficient and that it is unaffected by the feedback parameter adjustment of the retailer. The BOPS channel strengthens the cooperation between the manufacturer and the retailer and moderates the conflict between the online and the offline channels. The system will go into chaotic state and cause the system’s entropy to increase when the manufacturer adjusts his/her service decision quickly. In a chaotic state, the system is sensitive to initial conditions and service input is difficult to predict; the manufacturer and retailer need more additional information to make the system clear or use the method of feedback control to delay or eliminate the occurrence of chaos.
Highlights
In recent years, some Chinese retailers have profited enormously from the development of online marketing channels, these profits have come at the expense of traditional retailers who once dominated the market
Xie et al [10] built the revenue-sharing contract and cost-sharing contract to address the problem of forward channel conflicts and introduced the Stackelberg game to investigate the contract coordination mechanism. In contrast to this stream of work, this paper focuses on the service game of a multichannel supply chain where the manufacturer offers customers the option to buy online and pick up from the retailer’s store (BOPS), which is a new retail environment today
This paper broadens and enriches the research of the multichannel service supply chain and proposes a new perspective for multichannel research and decision references for multichannel enterprises, because decision-makers hope to draw up service strategies for the multichannel supply chain to solve the practical troubles of firms; This paper studies the dynamic service strategy under optimal pricing which further widens the research scope of the multichannel supply chain; This paper uses the entropy theory and dynamics theory to study the complexity and characteristics of the multichannel service supply chain and reveals that decision variables and parameters have great impact on the stability of the multichannel service supply chain
Summary
Some Chinese retailers have profited enormously from the development of online marketing channels, these profits have come at the expense of traditional retailers who once dominated the market. Xie et al [10] built the revenue-sharing contract and cost-sharing contract to address the problem of forward channel conflicts and introduced the Stackelberg game to investigate the contract coordination mechanism In contrast to this stream of work, this paper focuses on the service game of a multichannel supply chain where the manufacturer offers customers the option to buy online and pick up from the retailer’s store (BOPS), which is a new retail environment today. Investigated pricing problem of a dual-channel supply chain considering complementary products and different market power structures, and discussed the effects of important parameters on the pricing strategies. Matsui [33] investigated a multichannel supply chain model, where a manufacturer produces and sells products to retailers, and analyzed the optimal timing and level of wholesale and retail prices considering observable delay game.
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