How Add-on Pricing Interacts with Distribution Contracts
How Add-on Pricing Interacts with Distribution Contracts
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DOI：
10.1111/poms.12831
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发表时间：
2018-04-01
影响因子：
5
通讯作者：
Wei, Lai
中科院分区：
文献类型：
--
作者：
Geng, Xianjun;Tan, Yinliang (Ricky);Wei, Lai
随着互联网经济的兴起，越来越多的公司通过在线平台提供核心产品，但直接向消费者提供零售附加产品。与此同时，不少网络平台也开始采用代理（示范）合同，上游企业决定产品零售价格，下游平台从每笔销售中抽取一定比例的佣金。本研究探讨了上游公司的附加策略与下游在线平台的分销合同选择之间的相互作用。我们发现这样的公司更喜欢在批发合同下将附加产品和核心产品捆绑在一起，但更喜欢在代理合同下单独零售附加产品。因此，我们的研究首次表明分销合同可以严重影响公司在附加定价和捆绑销售之间的选择。在平台方面，我们发现较高的佣金率并不总是会为平台在代理合同下带来较高的利润。我们进一步确定了平台更喜欢代理合同而不是批发合同的两个条件：平台的佣金率不能太低，附加组件的市场潜力不能太大。对于整个渠道，我们表明附加定价和分销合同之间的相互作用会导致渠道绩效次优。也就是说，企业和平台都有可能在代理合同下获得比批发合同更高的利润。最后，我们还证明了我们的研究结果在几种替代模型规范下的稳健性。
With the rise of the Internet economy, an increasing number of firms are offering their core products through online platforms, but retail add-ons directly to consumers. Meanwhile, many online platforms have also started adopting the agency (model) contract, where the upstream firms decide the retail prices of products while the downstream platforms take a predetermined cut from each sale. This study examines the interaction between an upstream firm's add-on strategy and a downstream online platform's distribution contract choice. We find that such a firm prefers bundling the add-on and the core product together under the wholesale contract, but prefers retailing the add-on separately under the agency contract. Our research thus is the first to suggest that the distribution contract can critically affect a firm's choice between add-on pricing and bundling. On the platform side, we show that a higher commission rate does not always result in a higher profit for the platform under the agency contract. We further identify two conditions under which the platform prefers the agency contract over the wholesale contract: The commission rate for the platform cannot be too low, and the market potential of the add-on cannot be too large. For the overall channel, we show that the interaction between add-on pricing and distribution contracts leads to sub-optimal channel performance. That said, it is possible for both the firm and the platform to obtain higher profits under the agency contract than under the wholesale contract. Finally, we also demonstrate the robustness of our findings under several alternative model specifications.