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Received Sep 28, 2017; Revised Jan 7, 2018; Accepted Feb 18, 2018
This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
1. Introduction
With the rapid development of the Internet, customers are becoming more and more accustomed to online shopping. By means of an online channel, firms can deal with customers’ order and get the logistic information timely. Therefore, those firms, such as Amazon, Dell, Jingdong, Alibaba, and Taobao, can be closer to customers and have a better understanding of customers’ preference [1]. Thus, many manufacturers face the decision whether to add one direct channel in addition to the existing traditional channel. In order to improve competitiveness, many traditional manufacturers have begun or are beginning to set up their online direct sales channels. Therefore, the phenomenon that the traditional channel and direct sales channel coexisting is more common. Generally, it is called the dual-channel supply chain, which refers to the fact that the supply chain has the online (direct sales) and off-line (traditional retail) channels. In a dual-channel supply chain, the unreasonable pricing decisions may lead to the conflict between two channels, so one of the key issues in the dual-channel supply chain is the pricing problem.
With the help of the Internet, the direct sales channel in the dual-channel supply chain can realize the interaction of one to one between the firm and the customer, which is a good marketing channel. However, the information spread on Internet is faster; any change in supply or demand side may lead to a serious mismatch between supply and demand corresponding to a traditional channel. In 2017, the southern black sesame group (a Chinese company) obtained a lot of market concerns by a new IP (Intellectual Property) marketing and a favorable brand spokesperson, which directly promotes sales growth to exceed the firm’s expectations. However, the firm’s production line did not switch in time, so a serious stock-out happened for two channels [2]. And traditional disruption events, such as machine breakdown, raw material shortage, and workers strike, also can lead to one disruption. At August 16, 2017, all of CR Vanguard, WAL-MART, RT-MART, and other chain supermarkets expressed...