讲座题目：Committed or contingent? The retailer’s information acquisition and sharing strategies when confronting manufacturer encroachment

主讲嘉宾：孙淑晓 副教授

讲座时间：2021年12月3日（周五）19:00-20:30

讲座地点：腾讯会议 会议ID：945 739 416 密码：2021

讲座摘要：

Unlike most studies focusing on the manufacturer’s channel strategy, we investigate how a retailer strategically acquires and shares consumer quality preference information when confronting manufacturer encroachment. As a follower, the manufacturer decides the quality level and sales quantity based on the information he holds. Considering the retailer’s flexibility in acquisition timing, we focus on two formats, namely committed acquisition and contingent acquisition, depending on whether the retailer commits to her acquisition decision before or after the manufacturer’s quality investment. Assuming the manufacturer provides identical product through different selling channels, we find that when the manufacturer’s direct selling efficiency is high, contingent acquisition is always a weakly dominant strategy, while the retailer is suggested to commit to acquire information if and only if the direct selling efficiency is low and the acquisition cost is relatively high. If the consumer quality preference is acquired, information sharing occurs only when the direct selling efficiency is sufficiently high, via which the retailer can induce a lower expected wholesale price, gain a higher market share, and achieve a “win-win” situation. With the information advantage, the retailer can always obtain a positive profit in the distribution channel, while the inefficient manufacturer may stop selling in the direct channel when consumers have a low preference for quality. Our result explains why, despite manufacturers directly obtain profits from their own channels, they still sell products through retail channels and even treat them as main distributive ways. Based on the above equilibrium outcomes, we derive the retailer’s optimal strategy for information management, whereby the retailer can not only induce the highest product quality, but also the highest consumer surplus as compared to other acquisition strategies. Our work can guide retailers to better implement information strategies when confronting manufacturer encroachment.

嘉宾简介：

孙淑晓，闽江学院新华都商学院副教授，北京大学光华管理学院管理学博士。主要研究兴趣包括：运营管理、供应链管理、供应链金融、库存管理等。多篇论文发表于European Journal of Operational Research、International Journal of Production Economics等国内外期刊。

主办单位：12BET