• Asia Marketing Journal
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• 제19권4호
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• pp.37-59
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• 2018

This study investigates the effects of the distribution channel structure on quality decisions under duopoly competition. I considers a set-up in which two retailers compete on product quality and retail price. In the set-up, the integrated retailer has the power to determine the quality of its exclusive product, while the decentralized retailer does not. For the decentralized retailer, the supplier determines product quality. I find that asymmetric pairs of a decentralized channel by one retailer and an integrated channel by the other retailer can be a Nash equilibrium in a simultaneous-channel-choice model. The two retailers select different levels of quality, and this quality competition benefits retailers by softening price competition. In a sequential-channel-choice model, I find that the leader can obtain a first-mover advantage. From the perspective of the supplier, which can decide the distribution channel structure and level of quality, both suppliers choose the decentralized channel in equilibrium.

• 마케팅과학연구
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• 제19권1호
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• pp.37-46
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• 2009

The Census Bureau of the Department of Commerce announced in May 2008 that U.S. retail e-commerce sales for 2006 reached $ 107 billion, up from $ 87 billion in 2005 - an increase of 22 percent. From 2001 to 2006, retail e-sales increased at an average annual growth rate of 25.4 percent. The explosive growth of E-Commerce has caused profound changes in marketing channel relationships and structures in many industries. Despite the great potential implications for both academicians and practitioners, there still exists a great deal of uncertainty about the impact of the Internet channel introduction on distribution channel management. The purpose of this study is to investigate how the ownership of the new Internet channel affects the existing channel members and consumers. To explore the above research questions, this study conducts well-controlled mathematical experiments to isolate the impact of the Internet channel by comparing before and after the Internet channel entry. The model consists of a monopolist manufacturer selling its product through a channel system including one independent physical store before the entry of an Internet store. The addition of the Internet store to this channel system results in a mixed channel comprised of two different types of channels. The new Internet store can be launched by the independent physical store such as Bestbuy. In this case, the physical retailer coordinates the two types of stores to maximize the joint profits from the two stores. The Internet store also can be introduced by an independent Internet retailer such as Amazon. In this case, a retail level competition occurs between the two types of stores. Although the manufacturer sells only one product, consumers view each product-outlet pair as a unique offering. Thus, the introduction of the Internet channel provides two product offerings for consumers. The channel structures analyzed in this study are illustrated in Fig.1. It is assumed that the manufacturer plays as a Stackelberg leader maximizing its own profits with the foresight of the independent retailer's optimal responses as typically assumed in previous analytical channel studies. As a Stackelberg follower, the independent physical retailer or independent Internet retailer maximizes its own profits, conditional on the manufacturer's wholesale price. The price competition between two the independent retailers is assumed to be a Bertrand Nash game. For simplicity, the marginal cost is set at zero, as typically assumed in this type of study. In order to explore the research questions above, this study develops a game theoretic model that possesses the following three key characteristics. First, the model explicitly captures the fact that an Internet channel and a physical store exist in two independent dimensions (one in physical space and the other in cyber space). This enables this model to demonstrate that the effect of adding an Internet store is different from that of adding another physical store. Second, the model reflects the fact that consumers are heterogeneous in their preferences for using a physical store and for using an Internet channel. Third, the model captures the vertical strategic interactions between an upstream manufacturer and a downstream retailer, making it possible to analyze the channel structure issues discussed in this paper. Although numerous previous models capture this vertical dimension of marketing channels, none simultaneously incorporates the three characteristics reflected in this model. The analysis results are summarized in Table 1. When the new Internet channel is introduced by the existing physical retailer and the retailer coordinates both types of stores to maximize the joint profits from the both stores, retail prices increase due to a combination of the coordination of the retail prices and the wider market coverage. The quantity sold does not significantly increase despite the wider market coverage, because the excessively high retail prices alleviate the market coverage effect to a degree. Interestingly, the coordinated total retail profits are lower than the combined retail profits of two competing independent retailers. This implies that when a physical retailer opens an Internet channel, the retailers could be better off managing the two channels separately rather than coordinating them, unless they have the foresight of the manufacturer's pricing behavior. It is also found that the introduction of an Internet channel affects the power balance of the channel. The retail competition is strong when an independent Internet store joins a channel with an independent physical retailer. This implies that each retailer in this structure has weak channel power. Due to intense retail competition, the manufacturer uses its channel power to increase its wholesale price to extract more profits from the total channel profit. However, the retailers cannot increase retail prices accordingly because of the intense retail level competition, leading to lower channel power. In this case, consumer welfare increases due to the wider market coverage and lower retail prices caused by the retail competition. The model employed for this study is not designed to capture all the characteristics of the Internet channel. The theoretical model in this study can also be applied for any stores that are not geographically constrained such as TV home shopping or catalog sales via mail. The reasons the model in this study is names as "Internet" are as follows: first, the most representative example of the stores that are not geographically constrained is the Internet. Second, catalog sales usually determine the target markets using the pre-specified mailing lists. In this aspect, the model used in this study is closer to the Internet than catalog sales. However, it would be a desirable future research direction to mathematically and theoretically distinguish the core differences among the stores that are not geographically constrained. The model is simplified by a set of assumptions to obtain mathematical traceability. First, this study assumes the price is the only strategic tool for competition. In the real world, however, various marketing variables can be used for competition. Therefore, a more realistic model can be designed if a model incorporates other various marketing variables such as service levels or operation costs. Second, this study assumes the market with one monopoly manufacturer. Therefore, the results from this study should be carefully interpreted considering this limitation. Future research could extend this limitation by introducing manufacturer level competition. Finally, some of the results are drawn from the assumption that the monopoly manufacturer is the Stackelberg leader. Although this is a standard assumption among game theoretic studies of this kind, we could gain deeper understanding and generalize our findings beyond this assumption if the model is analyzed by different game rules.

• 유통과학연구
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• 제9권2호
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• pp.97-109
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• 2011

As a marketing vehicle to survive in intensified retailing competition, retailer brand development has been adopted by retailers in Korea. As evidence, the retailer brand share of a major retailer, Tesco Korea, has grown from 20% in 2007 to 22.8% in the first half of 2008. It means that retailers have provided more and more retailer brand foods for customers. With the growing accessibility to retailer brand foods, it would be expected that the number of retailer brand food claims will increase. Customers have increasingly exposed to a variety of marketing activities conducted by retailers. When buying the retailer brand foods, customers tend to be affected by marketing activities of retailers. Despite the fact that customers trust retailers and then, buy their brand foods, in case of food accidents caused by production process, customers have to seek compensation from a retailer brand supplier. Of course, a retailer tends to shift its responsibility to its suppliers. Accordingly, it is not easy for customers to solve food claims. The research, therefore, aims at exploring the relationship between the buying-decision processes of retailer brand customers and which side takes legal responsibility for food claims. To effectively achieve the research aim, the author adopted a quantitative and a qualitative research technique, in order to supplement the disadvantages of each method. Before field research, based on the developed research model, the author pre-tested questionnaire with 10 samples, amended, and handed out to 400 samples. Amongst them, 316 questionnaires are available. For a focus group interview, 9 participants were recruited, who are students, housewives, and full-time workers, aged from 20s to 40s. Through the focus group interview as well as the questionnaire results, it was found that most customers were influenced by a retailer or store image in a customer's mind, retailer reputation and promotional activities. Surprisingly, customers think that the name of a retailer is a more important factor than who produces retailer brand foods, even though many customers check a retailer brand supplier, when making a buying-decision. Rather than retailer brand suppliers, customers trust retailers. That is why they purchase retailer brands. Nevertheless, production-related food claims is not involved with retailers. In fact, it would be difficult for customers to distinguish whether a food claim is related to selling or manufacturing processes. Based on research results, from a customer perspective, the research suggests that the government should require retailers to take the whole responsibility for retailer brand food claims, preventing retailers from passing the buck to retailer brand suppliers. In case of food claims, in order for customers to easily get the compensation, it is necessary to reconsider the current system. If so, retailers have to fully get involved in retailer brand production stage, and further, the customer awareness of retailer brands will be improved than ever before. Retailers cannot help taking care of the whole processes of retailer brand development, because of responsibility. As a result, the process to seek compensation for food claims might become easier, and further, the protection of customer right might be improved.

• 한국유통학회지:유통연구
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• 제10권1호
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• pp.107-122
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• 2005

본 연구는 우리나라 통신서비스 소매점의 성과에 미치는 영향요인을 규명하는데 있다. 선행연구들이 소매점의 선택에 영양을 미치는 요인들을 규범적으로 제시하고, 그 요인들이 어떻게 분류되고, 성과에 미치는 영향을 주로 소비자들의 점포선택과 충성도라는 측면에서 진행되어 왔다면, 소매점의 입지환경을 관찰에 의하여 측정하고, 다시 관찰된 소매점의 성과인 방문고객의 수와 관련하여 연구하였다는 점에서 선행연구와 큰 차이가 있다. 소매점의 성과에 미치는 변수로서는 선행연구 결과와 앞서 언급한 우리나라 통신서비스 소매점의 특성을 고려하여 유동인구, 소매점 시계성, 경쟁점포의 수, 점포의 크기, 가판대 설치, 판촉 행사라는 8개의 변수를 선정하여, 이들 변수들이 소매점의 성과라 할 수 있는 소매점 방문고객의 수에 어떻게 영향을 주는 가를 분석하었다. 소매입지 요인과 점두마케팅 요인 중 어떠한 요인들이 소매점의 성과에 영향을 줄것인가를 분석한 결과, 점두유동인구, 점포 시계성, 점포의 크기는 5%의 유의 수준에서 소매점의 방문고객의 수에 긍정적인 영향을 주는 것으로, 가판대설치, 판촉행사는 19%의 유의수준에서 긍정적인 영향을 주는 것으로 나타났으나, 경쟁점포의 수는 영향을 주지 않는 것으로 확인되었다. 끝으로 이러한 결과의 이론적 및 실무적 시사점이 논의되고, 연구의 한계점과 미래의 연구방향이 제시되었다.

• 한국경영과학회지
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• 제37권3호
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• pp.95-116
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• 2012

The purpose of this paper is to show the effect of information sharing strategy on the supply chain performances. While traditional information sharing models assumed centralized stock information, recent supply chain practices often implement fully shared stock information, where real-time stock information is accessible on retailers. When retailers are competing with each other, this fully shared stock information may incur retailers' strategic order behaviors. Thus, this paper analyzes a simple two-level supply chain consisting of one warehouse and two identical competing retailers where the real time stock information is fully shared. The warehouse uses the traditional echelon stock policy. Under this environment the retailers' reorder decisions are derived using the order risk concept and the retailer competition mechanism is analyzed. Computational results show that the supply chain performace degradation in the fully shared stock information is quite significant, implying the importance of designing information sharing strategies in the supply chain design phase.

• 대한산업공학회지
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• 제31권4호
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• pp.277-288
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• 2005

The proliferation of the internet technologies and applications has intensified business activities on the Internet. This study considered the price competition between two shopping channels, one on-line seller and the other traditional off-line retailer. Based on the Hotelling's linear market model, we derive the Nash and Stackelberg equilibria as a function of the cost parameters which represent the characteristics of the online and off-line channels. By analyzing the equilibrium solutions, the following significant findings were obtained. First, pricing by Stackelberg equilibrium always outperformed that of Nash equilibrium. However the value of the cost parameters played a crucial role in determining both channels' preferred position (price leader or follower). Second, the online seller could benefit more in terms of profit by lowering its efficiency when its efficiency belongs to a certain interval. Third, when the online seller's efficiency is low, lowering its delivery cost has no contribution to its profit. To benefit more from lowering its delivery cost, increasing its channel efficiency to a certain level should be preceded.

• 지식경영연구
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• 제12권3호
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• pp.73-96
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• 2011

Recent market saturation makes the local retailers consider an attempt to innovate the market with the retailer's brand. This is the retailers' efforts to expand the market control through the enhancement of private brands. As the competition among manufacturers extends to the competition between manufacturers and retailers, the marketing knowledges of manufacturers need to be diversified to the ones that can be applied to the manufacturers and retailers due to their bilateral competition. This research concentrates on the customer acquisition strategy (attack strategy) and customer retention strategy (defense strategy) in the place of both sides of manufacturers and retailers. Also this research targets to develop the differential marketing strategies for target market's National Brand(NB)/Private Brand(PB) purchase by analyzing individual customer's purchase probability on repurchase and switch-purchase of NB and PB. This study is based on the data of frequently consumed product, tomato ketchup on scanner panel from the ERIM data of University of Chicago, USA. This study compares and analyzes the NB and PB repurchases and switch-purchase of 4 types. The comparisons provide the informations that which factors should be managed for the attack strategy, the defense strategy, and the differential marketing strategies both for manufacturers and retailers. This research is expected to contribute on cumulating the industrial knowledges of retailers' and manufacturers' survival strategy, expecially focusing on the effect of marketing factors and consumer-characteristic factors.

• 한국유통학회지:유통연구
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• 제17권2호
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• pp.29-62
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• 2012

최근 유통환경과 소비자 라이프스타일의 변화 속에서 단순히 제품을 판매하고 유통시키는 것에 그치는 것이 아닌 소매점자산을 증대시켜 고객을 획득하고 유지할 수 있는 차별화된 경쟁우위가 필요하게 되었으며, 이러한 대안으로 소매점 이미지의 중요성이 날로 커지고 있다. 이에 따라, 본 연구는 소매점의 이미지와 자아이미지 일치성이라는 요인과 고객기반 소매점자산과의 구조적관계를 조사하여 소비자들의 재이용의도에 어떠한 영향을 미치는지를 알아보고자 하였다. 본 연구의 가장 큰 학문적 기여점은 소매점자산에 영향을 주는 자아이미지일치성이라는 선행 요인을 찾아내는데 있으며, 또한 소매점자산이 재이용의도에 강력한 선행요인임을 확인하는데 있어서 기존의 연구들이 보여준 Second-order Construct 유형의 소매점자산척도와 결과 변수간의 단일차원 인과관계가 아닌, 소매점자산을 구성하는 각각의 요인들과 재이용의도의 좀 더 구체적인 변수간의 구조적관계를 실증할 수 있게 되었다. 본 연구는 소매점과 자아의 이미지일치성을 두 가지 차원(실제 자아이미지일치성, 이상적 자아이미지일치성)으로 나누고 소매점자산의 구성요소인 소매점인지, 소매점연상, 지각된 소매점 품질, 소매점충성도에 어떠한 영향을 미치는가를 분석하고 자아이미지일치성을 토대로 평가된 소매점자산 요인들이 소매점의 재이용의도에 미치는 영향을 분석하여 소매점의 이미지의 관리와 투자에 대한 마케팅 측면의 중요성을 제시하고 있다. 연구모델에 대한 분석결과 소매점-실제 자아이미지일치성과 소매점-이상적 자아이미지일치성 모두 모두 소매점자산 요인들에 긍정적인 영향을 미쳤으며, 그 중 이상적 자아이미지일치성이 소매점자산 요인들에 미치는 상대적인 영향력이 더 크게 나타났다. 또한 소매점자산을 구성하는 각각의 요인들은 소비자의 소매점 재이용의도에 긍정적인 영향을 주는 것으로 나타났다. 이는 타겟 소비자들의 자아 이미지와 소매점의 상징적 이미지를 일치시키는 마케팅 노력을 통해 소비자들과 소매점 사이의 강력한 감정적 결속이 형성되어 해당 소매점의 자산을 높게 평가하고 지속적인 이용의도를 가져올 수 있음을 시사한다.

• 한국의류학회지
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• 제27권5호
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• pp.570-581
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• 2003

The purpose of this study was to investigate competitive structure between the department store and the discount store based on consumers' purchase intention. Female consumers who purchased clothing both in the department store and the discount store participated in the study by completing questionnaires (N=533) . Data were analyzed using factor analyses, paired t-test, Cronbach's $\alpha$, and chi-square analyses. The result was as following: 1 . Overall, the department store and the discount store are competing complementarily. However, this competitive structure varied with clothing items and consumers' age. 2. As a result of factor analyses, the two retailer's service quality could be evaluated with four dimensions: price and A/S, store atmosphere and VMD, store policy, and salesperson. 3. The department store was expected to provide the highest level of service in ‘price and A/S’, ‘store atmosphere and VMD’, ‘salesperson’ whereas the discount store in ‘store policy’ 4. Respondents were classified in four groups according to how frequently they use department store and discount store as following: shopper of both retailers (68.35％), discount store shopper(20.97%), department store shopper(4.70%), shopper of neither retailer(3.97％). Each group showed differences in service satisfaction and demographic characteristics.

• Asia pacific journal of information systems
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• 제15권3호
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• pp.1-7
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• 2005

This paper examines strategic competition model between offline and online retailers and draws strategic implications. Research on the price competition between conventional offline retailers and online retailers has been done through empirical approaches, however, the results are conflicting. This paper reconciles the existing conflicting empirical findings on price levels between offline and online retailers through theoretical approach. This paper analyzes how the internet market has effect on equilibrium prices of both offline and online retailers and discusses the possible reasons why there exist price differences between offline and online retailers in business to consumer electronic commerce.