• Asia Marketing Journal
• /
• v.19 no.4
• /
• pp.37-59
• /
• 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.

• Journal of Global Scholars of Marketing Science
• /
• v.19 no.1
• /
• pp.37-46
• /
• 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.

• Journal of Distribution Science
• /
• v.9 no.2
• /
• pp.97-109
• /
• 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.

• Journal of Distribution Research
• /
• v.10 no.1
• /
• pp.107-122
• /
• 2005

The purpose of this research is to find out what factors have an effect on the retailer's performance. Most of the former researches in the similar fields performed their study based on the customers reasons for revisiting or store loyalty. But this research has been done not based on the customer but based on the retailers. It means that the data was collected from individual retailer. Considering the former research and characteristics of the franchisee retailers, size of temporal population around the retailers, visibility of the retailer, competition situation, out-door promotion, street shelf, size of the retailer were selected as factors affecting on the retailers performance. As a performance variable, number of visitors happened to observation period. Data collection was performed through the observation of the retail circumstance and interview with the retailers owner. As meaningful variables affecting on the retailers performance, size of temporal population around the retailers, visibility of the retailer were found in the 5% significance level, and out-door promotion, street shelf, size of the retailer in the 10% significance level, whereas competition situation did not have effect on retailers performance. Finally, we discuss several theoretical and practical implications, and suggest limitations for the research and future research issue.

• Journal of the Korean Operations Research and Management Science Society
• /
• v.37 no.3
• /
• pp.95-116
• /
• 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.

• Journal of Korean Institute of Industrial Engineers
• /
• v.31 no.4
• /
• pp.277-288
• /
• 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.

• Knowledge Management Research
• /
• v.12 no.3
• /
• pp.73-96
• /
• 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.

• Journal of Distribution Research
• /
• v.17 no.2
• /
• pp.29-62
• /
• 2012

As distribution environment is changing rapidly and competition is more intensive in the channel of distribution, the importance of retailer image and retailer equity is increasing as a different competitive advantages. Also, consumers are not functionally oriented and that their behavior is significantly affected by the symbols such as retailer image which identify retailer in the market place. That is, consumers do not choose products or retailers for their material utilities but consume the symbolic meaning of those products or retailers as expressed in their self images. The concept of self-image congruence has been utilized by marketers and researchers as an aid in better understanding how consumers identify themselves with the brands they buy and the retailer they patronize. Although self-image congruity theory has been tested across many product categories, the theory has not been tested extensively in the retailing. Therefore, this study attempts to investigate the impact of self image congruence between retailer image and self image of consumer on retailer equity such as retailer awareness, retailer association, perceived retailer quality, and retailer loyalty. The purpose of this study is to find out whether retailer-self image congruence can be a new antecedent of retailer equity. In addition, this study tries to examine how four-dimensional retailer equity constructs (retailer awareness, retailer association, perceived retailer quality, and retailer loyalty) affect customers' repatronage intention. For this study, data were gathered by survey and analyzed by structural equation modeling. The sample size in the present study was 254. The reliability of the all seven dimensions was estimated with Cronbach's alpha, composite reliability values and average variance extracted values. We determined whether the measurement model supports the convergent validity and discriminant validity by Exploratory factor analysis and Confirmatory Factor Analysis. For each pair of constructs, the square root of the average variance extracted values exceeded their correlations, thus supporting the discriminant validity of the constructs. Hypotheses were tested using the AMOS 18.0. As expected, the image congruence hypotheses were supported. The greater the degree of congruence between retailer image and self-image, the more favorable were consumers' retailer evaluations. The all two retailer-self image congruence (actual self-image congruence and ideal self-image congruence) affected customer based retailer equity. This result means that retailer-self image congruence is important cue for customers to estimate retailer equity. In other words, consumers are often more likely to prefer products and retail stores that have images similar to their own self-image. Especially, it appeared that effect for the ideal self-image congruence was consistently larger than the actual self-image congruence on the retailer equity. The results mean that consumers prefer or search for stores that have images compatible with consumer's perception of ideal-self. In addition, this study revealed that customers' estimations toward customer based retailer equity affected the repatronage intention. The results showed that all four dimensions (retailer awareness, retailer association, perceived retailer quality, and retailer loyalty) had positive effect on the repatronage intention. That is, management and investment to improve image congruence between retailer and consumers' self make customers' positive evaluation of retailer equity, and then the positive customer based retailer equity can enhance the repatonage intention. And to conclude, retailer's image management is an important part of successful retailer performance management, and the retailer-self image congruence is an important antecedent of retailer equity. Therefore, it is more important to develop and improve retailer's image similar to consumers' image. Given the pressure to provide increased image congruence, it is not surprising that retailers have made significant investments in enhancing the fit between retailer image and self image of consumer. The enhancing such self-image congruence may allow marketers to target customers who may be influenced by image appeals in advertising.

• Journal of the Korean Society of Clothing and Textiles
• /
• v.27 no.5
• /
• pp.570-581
• /
• 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
• /
• v.15 no.3
• /
• pp.1-7
• /
• 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.