研究了存在网上直销以及实体店的双渠道供应链中,只有实体销售商有进一步体验以及披露产品信息的情况下,制造商的两种“搭便车”效应对信息披露决策和定价决策的影响.建模描述了供应链两个渠道的终端消费者效益,得出纳入消费者关注度和信息搜索成本的渠道需求,分别得到单一和双重“搭便车”效应模式下供应链的定价策略和零售商的信息披露条件,分析了信息搜索成本、消费者关注度以及渠道间产品质量差异对信息披露决策的影响.通过两种模式的对比,得到终端搭便车效应对制造商和零售商的决策影响.研究发现:考虑搭便车时,零售商只有在产品质量处于一定区间且批发价足够低时,才会披露质量信息;信息搜索成本增加、渠道间产品差异缩小以及消费者对渠道产品关注度提升,都将一定程度地抑制零售商披露信息的意愿;终端搭便车使得零售商更不愿意披露信息,但消费者关注度满足一定条件时,双重模式下零售商披露的信息将多于仅有批发价搭便车时的情况;终端搭便车效果系数足够高时,终端搭便车效果越好,制造商更愿意付出一定代价引诱零售商披露信息.
This study investigated how two types of free-riding effects may influence quality disclosure and pricing decision in a dual-channel supply chain, consisting of an upstream manufacturer, which owns an electronic channel, and a downstream retailer. In this paper we incorporated consumer attentiveness, as well as search costs, into a model of quality disclosure, to describe end consumers' surplus of purchase and both channels' demand. Then we derived the channel's optimal pricing strategy and disclosure conditions under two free-riding formats, respectively. And the impact of consumer attentiveness, search costs and product differentiation between two channels on quality disclosure was analyzed, too. We next compared the decisions of the manufacturer and the retailer under two free-riding formats to derive the influence exerted on the point-of-sale terminal free-riding effect. Our results suggest that:when considering free-riding effect, a retailer discloses the quality to consumers if and only if the quality is appropriate and the wholesale price is sufficiently low; a retailer should disclose less quality information as the share of partially informed consumers (informed about one channel but not the other) increases, as consumer search costs increase, or as product differentiation between two channels decreases; the point-of-sale terminal free-riding effect leads to a lower incentive for information revelation; if some conditions are satisfied for consumer attentiveness, more information will be provided than that when the wholesale price free-riding effect is considered only; when the point-of-sale terminal free-riding parameter is sufficiently high, the greater it is, the more incentives a manufacture will have to induce his retailer to disclose information.