Perlman Yael
Department of Management, Bar-Ilan University, Ramat Gan, 5290002 Israel.
Cent Eur J Oper Res. 2022 Sep 23:1-19. doi: 10.1007/s10100-022-00818-0.
This paper investigates whether an e-tailer should act as a platform and offer customers the product of a seller who can reach customers only through the e-tailer, and if so, what type of contract to offer the seller: a proportional commission based on revenue or a fixed fee per unit sold. The e-tailer also chooses the product line design: offer only her own product, offer only the outside seller's product, or offer both her own product and the seller's product. Intuitively, when the e-tailer's product outperforms the seller's product in terms of value-to-cost ratio, the e-tailer should not offer the seller's product. However, non-intuitively, we also identify conditions in which the e-tailer remains better off not opening her platform to the seller even though the seller's value-to-cost ratio is higher than the e-tailer's and show how these conditions depends also on the consumers valuations. Regarding the type of contract to offer the seller, we find that most of the time, a proportional commission based on revenue is the best contract, guaranteeing the highest e-tailer profit. However, this is not always the case since there are situations when a fixed fee contract reduces the potential of internal competition.
本文研究了电子零售商是否应充当平台，向客户提供只能通过该电子零售商接触到客户的卖家的产品，以及如果这样做，应向卖家提供何种类型的合同：基于收入的比例佣金还是每销售单位的固定费用。电子零售商还选择产品线设计：只提供自己的产品、只提供外部卖家的产品，还是同时提供自己的产品和卖家的产品。直观地说，当电子零售商的产品在性价比方面优于卖家的产品时，电子零售商不应提供卖家的产品。然而，非直观的是，我们还确定了即使卖家的性价比高于电子零售商，电子零售商不向卖家开放其平台仍能保持更好状况的条件，并展示了这些条件如何也取决于消费者的估值。关于向卖家提供的合同类型，我们发现大多数情况下，基于收入的比例佣金是最佳合同，能保证电子零售商获得最高利润。然而，情况并非总是如此，因为存在固定费用合同会降低内部竞争潜力的情况。
