Pricing strategies for dual-channel supply chain considering showrooming effect and channel power structures
摘要
With the integration of the online channel and the offline channel, numerous consumers experience the product offline yet purchase online, which is called the “showrooming effect”. Given the showrooming effect in a dual-channel supply chain, we investigate the pricing strategies of supply chain members under various channel power structures, i.e., Manufacturer Stackelberg (MS), Retailer Stackelberg (RS), and Vertical Nash (VN). The findings indicate that both the intensity of channel competition and the showrooming effect coefficient affect online demand and wholesale price when the manufacturer is dominant. However, the showrooming effect coefficient is the only factor that impacts retail prices and offline demand. Furthermore, the retail prices and the offline demand when the retailer dominates are lower than those under other channel power structures, challenging the conventional wisdom that “the dominant party always profits more”. Interestingly, contrary to the intuition that the showrooming effect is always detrimental to the retailer’s interest, we find that it boosts the retailer’s profitability in both MS and VN scenarios. We verify that these findings are robust across several model extensions, including advertising strategy, asymmetric demand information, self-price elasticity, different market potentials, and manufacturer’s direct selling cost. Our study can provide decision-makers with some managerial insights into the showrooming effect.