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This paper aims to study the joint decision making of advance selling and service cancelation for service provides with limited capacity when consumers are overconfident.

For the case in which consumers encounter uncertainties about product valuation and consumption states in the advance period and are overconfident about the probability of a good state, we study how the service provider chooses the optimal sales strategy among the non-advance selling strategy, the advance selling and disallowing cancelation strategy, and the advance selling and allowing cancelation strategy. We also discuss how overconfidence influences the service provider’s decision making.

The results show that when service capacity is sufficient, the service provider should adopt advance selling and disallow cancelation; when service capacity is insufficient, the service provider should still implement advance selling but allow cancelation; and when service capacity is extremely insufficient, the service provider should offer spot sales. Moreover, overconfidence weakens the necessity to allow cancelation under sufficient service capacity and enhances it under insufficient service capacity but is always advantageous to advance selling.

The obtained results provide managerial insights for service providers to make advance selling decisions.

This paper is among the first to explore the effect of consumers’ overconfidence on the joint decision of advance selling and service cancelation under capacity constraints.

Previous studies have rarely integrated the financing modes of a capital-constrained manufacturer with the choices of online sales strategies. To address this gap, the authors study how a manufacturer selects optimal financing modes under different sales strategies in three dual-channel supply chains.

This paper considers three sales strategies, namely, combining a traditional retailer channel with one of the direct selling, reselling and agency selling channels, and two common financing modes, namely, bank financing and retailer financing. The authors obtain equilibrium outcomes of the manufacturer and traditional retailer and then provide the conditions for them to select optimal financing modes under three sales strategies.

The results indicate that the manufacturer’s financing decisions rely on the initial capital and interest rates, and the manufacturer selects retailer financing only if the initial capital is relatively larger. In terms of financing mode options, the retailer financing mode is more beneficial for the manufacturer under the three sales strategies. From the perspective of sales strategies, the direct selling model is more beneficial. In addition, the higher the consumer acceptance of the online channel, the more profits the manufacturer obtains.

This paper provides suggestions on how the capital-constrained manufacturer chooses financing modes and sales strategies.

This paper integrates the financing mode and different sales strategies to investigate the manufacturer’s optimal operational decisions. These sales strategies allow us to investigate the manufacturer’s optimal financing modes in the presence of both different financing modes and sales strategies.

This paper analyzes the advance selling and pricing strategies of fresh products supply chain where the e-retailer provides wholesale contract or agency contract to the fresh products supplier.

This paper constructed a two-period sequential-move game of fresh products supply chain members.

This analysis showed that the supply chain members had different preferences for contracts under different market conditions. The advance selling of fresh products was not a decision of the seller, but also required the support of other supply chain members. And the advance selling strategy was not always beneficial to all supply chain parties. Under the two contracts, there were market conditions in which the profits of supply chain members were Pareto-improved through the implementation of advance selling.

The model presented in this study focuses solely on the context of monopoly, overlooking the competition from alternative suppliers or retailers. Consequently, exploring the competitive landscape within the fresh products supply chain, particularly in relation to pre-sale pricing, emerges as a crucial avenue for further investigation. By employing empirical research methods, valuable insights are gleaned, thereby significantly augmenting the existing body of relevant theories.

The decision to pre-sell fresh products should be based on market conditions. Supply chain members can control production costs and fresh products circulation losses to maximize profits.

From the perspective of game theory, this study analyzed the optimal advance selling and pricing strategies of fresh products supply chain members under two kinds of contracts. These results can provide practical implications for fresh products suppliers and e-retailers.

This paper aims to study the interplay between a risk-averse national brand manufacturer's (NBM) selling mode decision and a risk-neutral e-platform's private brand (PB) introduction decision.

A game theory model is used to solve selling mode decision, that is whether transform the selling mode from the wholesale mode to the marketplace mode, and PB introduction decision, that is, whether introduce the PB.

The results show that for the NBM, under certain condition, the NBM's selling mode decision is not affected by the e-platform's PB introduction decision. High revenue-sharing rate is conducive only when the difference in consumer preference between the PB and the national brand (NB) is small. The NBM's risk aversion will improve the applicability of the marketplace mode. For the e-platform, high PB preference of consumers and risk-averse behavior of the NBM is not conducive to PB introduction. For the supply chain, scenarios that the NB monopolizes the market under the wholesale mode and PB introduction under the marketplace mode should be prevented. PB introduction under the wholesale mode will become the only equilibrium with the increase of risk aversion of the NBM. Finally, the authors extend the scenario that consumers prefer the PB and the e-platform is risk-averse enterprise and find that PB introduction under the wholesale mode is detrimental to the NBM but beneficial to the supply chain. The impact of consumers' PB preference on the e-platform's PB introduction is opposite to the basic model. The impact of the e-platform's risk aversion on game equilibrium is opposite to that of the NBM's risk aversion.

This paper is first to study selling mode decision and PB introduction decision when considering enterprises' risk-averse attitude.

We explore the driving forces behind the channel choices of the manufacturer and the platform by considering asymmetric selling cost and demand information.

This paper develops game-theoretical models to study different channel strategies for an E-commerce supply chain, in which a manufacturer distributes products through a platform that may operate in either the marketplace channel or the reseller channel.

Three primary models are built and analyzed. The comparison results show that the platform would share demand information in the reseller channel only if the service cost performance is relatively high. Besides, with an increasing selling cost, the equilibrium channel might shift from the marketplace to the reseller. With increasing information accuracy, the manufacturer tends to select the marketplace channel, while the platform tends to select the reseller channel if the service cost performance is low and tends to select the marketplace channel otherwise.

All these results have been numerically verified in the experiments. At last, we also resort to numerical study and find that as the service cost performance increases, the equilibrium channel may shift from the reseller channel to the marketplace channel. These results provide managerial guidance to online platforms and manufacturers regarding strategic decisions on channel management.

Although prior research has paid extensive attention to the driving forces behind the online channel choice between marketplace and reseller, there is at present few study considering the case where a manufacturer selling through an online platform faces a demand information disadvantage in the reseller channel and sales inefficiency in the marketplace channel. To fill this research gap, our work illustrates the interaction between demand information asymmetry and selling cost asymmetry to identify the equilibrium channel strategy and provides useful managerial guidelines for both online platforms and manufacturers.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the opaque inventory information disclosure strategy for an online retailer who sells two substitutable products to customers in two selling periods.

The authors develop a two-period model where an online retailer sells two substitute products with two inventory composition structures to maximize profits. The authors investigate the optimal inventory disclosure decision from both ex post and ex ante perspectives. Sensitivity analysis is performed to investigate the effects that discount rate, transaction cost and the probability of agreeable inventory situation have on the equilibrium disclosure outcome. The authors also consider risk-averse customers and horizontally differentiated products to highlight the robustness of our results.

The authors find that the online retailer will choose the opaque information disclosure when attempting to increase revenue and reduce the mismatch of supply and demand in both ex post and ex ante inventory information conditions. Comparing with ex post disclosure strategies, ex ante opaque disclosure is optimal in a larger price region, and the total revenues gap between opaque disclosure and complete disclosure gradually increase as discount rate, transaction cost or the probability of agreeable inventory situation decreases. Furthermore, strategic customers may tend to be risk neutral when faced with opaque inventory information in a two-period sales setting.

This current paper is the first paper to study the online retailer's inventory information disclosure strategy in two selling periods. Moreover, this paper presents the conditions under which the online retailer should share complete or opaque inventory information with customers to maximize the online retailer's total revenues.

The purpose of this article is based on the unit patent license fee model in the closed-loop supply chain.

This paper analyzes the impact of the bundling strategy of the retailer selling new products and remanufactured products on the closed-loop supply chain under the condition that the original manufacturer produces new products and the remanufacturer produces remanufacturing products.

The results show that alternative products can be bundled, and in many cases, the bundling of remanufactured products and new products is better than selling alone.

If the retailer chooses bundling, for the remanufacturer, when certain conditions are met, the benefits of bundling are greater than the separate sales at that time; for the original manufacturer, when the recycling price sensitivity coefficient is high, the bundling is better than separate sales.

The study aims to identify salespeople’s challenges while selling newly launched products in the fast-moving consumer goods (FMCG) sector by examining the holistic environment in which they perform their selling tasks. Furthermore, it develops a hierarchical model mapping the interrelationships between identified challenges to explore their dependence and driving power through qualitative research techniques.

The current study is exploratory and inductive in its research design. It used focus-group discussion (FGD), semistructured interviews and thematic content analysis (TCA) to identify new-product selling challenges in the FMCG sector. The identified factors were then worked into a hierarchical model using total interpretive structural modeling (TISM) to analyze their relationship. The factors were further classified into clusters based on their driving and dependence power, with the help of the Matrice d’Impacts Croisés Multiplication Appliquée à un Classement (MICMAC) technique

The TISM and MICMAC results identified salespeople’s most critical new-product selling challenges in the FMCG sector: product innovation, product differentiation, customer perception and market turbulence. An enhanced organizational focus on these factors will ensure that salespeople get adequate input to tackle the challenges they face while selling newly launched FMCG products.

The study was confined to identifying challenges in the FMCG sector alone but offered scope for application in other sectors.

This study will help organizations to identify and close gaps in the new-product selling process, thereby improving the performance of salespeople and contributing to a new product’s success. The study findings have a bearing on various stages of product development, management and life cycle. They also highlight the need for greater synergy between an organization’s sales force and other departments.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this research is unique in identifying new-product selling challenges in the FMCG sector. It also delineates the complex Web of interrelationships between them and classifies the identified factors based on their driving and dependence on power. The research results can help in organizational decision-making and sales practices, empowering salespeople in their new-product selling tasks.

Cross-selling becomes critical for business success as pent-up travel demand drives travelers to spend more on vacations. The primary purpose of this research is to identify if an unexpected discount leads to consumers' additional purchases online. This research proposes effective cross-selling strategies across hospitality sectors.

Two experiments were conducted to investigate factors that influence travelers' add-on spending. Study 1 determined the psychological mechanism of unexpected discounts on hotel customers' additional spending by individual thinking styles. A 2 (discount: none vs surprise) x 2 (thinking style: holistic vs analytic) quasi-experimental design was utilized. Study 2 applied the identified pricing strategy by individual thinking styles to cruise line add-on selling. A 2 (discount: none vs surprise) x 2 (product type: hedonic vs utilitarian) x 2 thinking style (holistic vs analytic) quasi-experiment was used.

The findings indicate that an unexpected discount increases holistic thinkers' overall travel spending, regardless of add-on types. Although the unexpected discount effect on analytic thinkers' overall spending was significant, an unexpected discount enhanced their intentions to purchase a hedonic add-on.

Hospitality operators can improve cross-selling strategies with a surprise discount offer. Offering add-on items in the same transaction with a cabin booking will increase add-on purchases. Hotels can make add-on purchases more appealing by emphasizing the experiential aspects of a hotel stay.

This research broadens knowledge of cross-selling by linking add-on purchases to discount pricing on a primary product. The findings provide new strategies to stimulate add-on purchases and maximize profitability.

This study aims to investigate whether the contract manufacturer (CM) should take the first-mover advantage in the end-product without supplying core components to the original equipment manufacturer (OEM) immediately, or should fully squeeze the benefit of the learning effect through an amplified production quantity by letting the OEM enter the end-product market early.

The authors propose a two-period model for a supply chain consisting of a CM and an OEM where the CM has four alternative entry strategies concerning it competition to the OEM in the end-product market. For each strategy, the authors derive the equilibrium solutions of the two firms using a backward approach. Comparison leads to the CM’s final choices among the four strategies.

For both CM and OEM, the monopoly and the first-entry strategies will be dominated by either the post-entry or the simultaneous-entry strategy, and thus, their preferred strategy is chosen from the latter two. Regarding the two firms choices between the post- and simultaneous-entry strategy, the CM prefers the post-entry strategy when the OEMs brand premium is at a moderate level, whereas the OEM prefers the post-entry strategy when its brand premium is low, and the learning effect can amplify the interval for the CMs adopting the post-entry strategy as well as changes the interval for the OEMs preference related to the two strategies.

This paper is the first one to explore the optimal strategy for a CM to maximize its profit in a co-opetitive supply chain situation with a CM and an OEM. The authors believe that our paper contributes to both literature and the market.