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Chinese Journal of Management Science ›› 2020, Vol. 28 ›› Issue (10): 144-155.doi: 10.16381/j.cnki.issn1003-207x.2020.10.014

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Research on Distribution Channel Cooperation Strategy Considering Product Experience and Sales Efforts

LU Fang1,2, WU Jian3, LUO Ding-ti2   

  1. 1. College of Logistics & Transportation, Central South University of Forestry & Technology, Changsha 410000, China;
    2. Business School, Hunan University of Technology, Zhuzhou 412000, China;
    3. College of System Engineering, National University of Defense Technology changsha 410000, China
  • Received:2018-05-16 Revised:2018-09-07 Online:2020-10-20 Published:2020-11-11

Abstract: Research on product distribution channel cooperation mainly focuses on channel cost, risk aversion, consumer fairness preference and pays less attention to the product's own attributes. For products with lower experience, consumers can judge product value more accurately without experience, and network channels have an advantage in such less experienced products. For products with higher experience, the network channel cannot accurately judge the value of such products because of its virtuality. On the contrary, the physical channel can help consumers determine the true value of the product through the actual product experience. However, due to the spillover effect of the physical channel marketing efforts, the consumers of the physical channel are likely to transfer to the network channel after experiencing the product. It can be seen that the attribute of product experience has a great influence on the choice of product distribution channels. In order to maximize profits of the manufacturers, there arises a demand of the research on the cooperation strategy of distribution channels from the perspective of product experience and marketing efforts.
The impact of product experience and marketing efforts on different channel needs are first analyzed from the perspective of consumer utility. Based on this, three distribution channel cooperation strategies of manufacturers and retailers are studied, and the different impacts of different product experience and marketing efforts for different distribution channels are explored. The first is a single cooperation strategy for manufacturers to support offline retailers to implement marketing efforts; the second is a dual cooperation strategy for manufacturers and retailers to adopt price coordination contracts under a single cooperation strategy; and the third is a multi-cooperation strategy between manufacturers and retailers to further introduce revenue sharing contracts.
Through the numerical simulation of the three cooperation strategies, the results show that under the combined effect of product experience and marketing efforts, the three cooperation strategies can effectively improve the profit level of manufacturers and offline retailers, and the lower the product experience is, the more important the cooperation strategy is. In the initial stage of entering the market, manufacturers often need to rapidly increase corporate value. At this time, the dual cooperation strategy is the best choice. When the market matures, the dual cooperation strategy can effectively improve the offline retailer's income, but the manufacturer's revenue is reduced. In order to encourage manufacturers to support offline retailers to implement marketing efforts, it is necessary to redistribute the cooperative income. At this time, the multiple cooperation strategy is the best choice.

Key words: product experience, sales efforts, cooperation strategy

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