Motivating Retail Marketing Effort: Optimal Contract Design
Motivating Retail Marketing Effort: Optimal Contract Design
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DOI：
10.1111/j.1937-5956.2009.01014.x
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发表时间：
2009-03
影响因子：
5
通讯作者：
Samar K. Mukhopadhyay;Xuemei Su;S. Ghose
中科院分区：
文献类型：
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作者：
Samar K. Mukhopadhyay;Xuemei Su;S. Ghose
我们研究的分销渠道中，制造商依赖于销售代理销售产品，并在最适当的营销努力投资。代理人的努力很难监控。此外，努力成本是代理人的私人信息。这些都给制造商施加了挑战，使其奋进影响代理商的营销努力条款，并在双方之间分配利润。我们提出了两种合同形式。特许经营费合同由两部分组成，规定了可变批发价和固定特许经营费。零售价格维持合同将代理商向客户收取的允许零售价格与制造商和销售水平的总付款联系起来。在信息不对称的情况下，为了执行任何一种合同形式，制造商需要提供一份合同菜单，希望在代理人从菜单中选择某个合同时调用“显示原则”。我们表明，这两种合同形式表现不同，每一方对特定合同形式的偏好与总保留利润水平和/或销售代理的成本类型。为制造商在不同条件下选择更好的合同形式提供了管理指导。
We study a distribution channel where a manufacturer relies on a sales agent for selling the product, and for investing in the most appropriate marketing effort. The agent's effort is hard to monitor. In addition, the cost of effort is the agent's private information. These impose challenges to the manufacturer in its endeavor to influence the agent's marketing effort provisions and to allocate profit between the two parties. We propose two contract forms. The franchise fee contract is a two‐part price schedule specifying a variable wholesale price and a fixed franchise fee. The retail price maintenance contract links the allowed retail price that the agent charges customers with total payment to the manufacturer and sales level. Under information asymmetry, for implementing either contract form, the manufacturer needs to offer a menu of contracts, hoping to invoke the “revelation principle” when the agent picks a certain contract from that menu. We show that the two contract forms perform differently, and each party's preference toward a particular contract form is linked with the total reservation profit level and/or the sales agent's cost type. We provide managerial guidelines for the manufacturer in selecting a better contract form under different conditions.