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The importance of service firms cooperating with digital platforms is widely acknowledged. The authors study three contractual relationships (fixed-cost, cost-sharing, and profit-sharing) between service firms (specifically hotels) and digital platforms in a highly fragmented service supply chain to examine which of these contract types optimizes profits.

The authors extend prior models analyzing the optimal expected total profit from the travel service firm (hotel)–digital platform relationship, providing new insights into each contract type’s ability to coordinate decentralized systems and optimize profits for both parties.

This study finds that fixed cost contracts cannot coordinate the decentralized system. Cost-sharing contracts can coordinate the decentralized system but only allow one channel profit split. In contrast, profit-sharing contracts may not always perfectly coordinate the decentralized system but support alternative profit allocations. Practically, both profit-sharing and cost-sharing contracts are preferable to fixed-cost contracts.

The paper includes implications for travel service firm managers to consider when structuring contracts with digital platforms to focus on profit optimization. Profit-sharing contracts are most preferable when cost and revenue data are fully shared between parties, while cost-sharing contracts are preferable over fixed-cost contracts.

This study extends prior investigations into the utility of different contract types on the optimal profit of a travel service firm (hotel)-digital platform provider relationship. The research fills a gap in the literature concerning the contracts used in these relationship types.

The development of the digital age has made data and information more transparent, enhancing the strategic perspectives of both buyers (strategic waiting) and sellers (price fluctuations) in their decision-making. This research investigates the optimal dynamic pricing strategy of the content product developer in relation to their consideration of consumer fairness concerns to elucidate the impact of consumer fairness concerns on the dynamic pricing strategy of the developer.

This paper assumes that monopolistic content developers implement a dynamic pricing strategy for the content product. Through constructing a two-period dynamic pricing game model, this research investigates the optimal decisions of the content developer, contingent upon their consideration or disregard of consumer fairness concerns. In the extension section, the authors additionally account for the influence of myopic consumers on these optimal decisions.

Our findings reveal that the degree of consumer fairness concerns significantly influences the developer’s optimal dynamic pricing decision. When a developer offers content products with lower depth, there is a propensity for the developer to refrain from incorporating consumer fairness concerns into a dynamic pricing strategy. Conversely, in cases where the developer offers a high-depth content product, consumer fairness concerns benefit the developer. Furthermore, our analysis reveals a consistent benefit for the developer from the inclusion of myopic consumers.

Few studies have delved into the conjoined influence of consumer fairness concerns and strategic behavior on dynamic pricing strategy. Our findings indicate that consumer fairness concerns can enhance the efficiency of the value chain for content products under specific conditions. This paper not only enriches the existing literature on dynamic pricing by incorporating consumer fairness concerns theoretically but also offers practical insights. The outcomes of this research can guide content product developers in devising optimal dynamic pricing strategies.

With the development of digitalization and interconnection, there is a growing need for enterprise customers to ensure the compatibility of the third-party components they are using in the manufacturing process, thus raising the integration requirements for the Industrial Internet platform and its third-party developers. Therefore, our study investigates the optimal integration decision of the Industrial Internet platform while considering its access price, the integration cost, and the net utility derived by enterprise customers from the third-party components.

We model a two-sided Industrial Internet platform that connects customers on the demand side to the developers on the supply side. We then explore the integration decision of the Industrial Internet platform and its important factors by solving the optimal profit function.

First, despite the high integration cost of third-party developers, the platform still chooses to integrate when enterprise customers derive high utility from the third-party components. Second, due to the compatibility effect, charging the enterprise customers a higher price may reduce the platform profits when these customers derive low utility from the third-party components. Third, the platform profits will increase along with the integration cost of third-party developers when it is low in the case where enterprise customers derive low utility from third-party components.

Our findings offer insightful takeaways for the Industrial Internet platform when making integration decisions.

The purpose of this paper is to analyze manufacturers' production decisions and governments' low-carbon policies in the context of influencer spillover effects.

This paper investigates the impact of the social influencer spillover effect on manufacturers' production decisions when they collaborate with intermediary platforms to sell products through marketplace or reseller modes. Game theory and static numerical comparison are used to analyze our models.

Firstly, under low-carbon policies, the spillover effect does not always benefit manufacturer profits and changes non-monotonically with an increasing spillover effect. Secondly, in cases where there are both a carbon emission constraint and a spillover effect present, if either the manufacturer or intermediary platform holds a strong position, then marketplace mode benefits manufacturer profits. Thirdly, regardless of business mode used when environmental damage coefficient is high for products; government should implement cap-and-trade regulation to optimize social welfare while reducing manufacturers’ carbon emissions.

This study offers theoretical and practical research support to assist manufacturers in optimizing production decisions for compliance with carbon emission limits, enhancing profits through the development of effective influencer marketing strategies, and providing strategies to mitigate carbon emissions and enhance social welfare while sustaining manufacturing activities.

This paper addresses the limitations of prior research by examining how the social influencer spillover effect influences manufacturers' business mode choices under government low-carbon policies and analyzing the social welfare of different carbon emission restrictions when such spillovers occur. Our findings provide valuable insights for manufacturers in selecting optimal marketing strategies and business modes and decision-makers in implementing effective regulations.

The paper attempts to discuss the optimal pricing decisions under the decentralized and centralized decision and analyze the influence of online reviews and in-sale service on dual-channel supply chain. Finally, the authors design a two-part tariff coordination mechanism.

To deal with this pricing conflict problems of dual-channel supply chain consisting of dominant manufacturer and a retailer, considering the fact that online reviews and in-sale service are important factors on consumers’ purchase decisions, the authors establish some basic models and exploit them to discuss the optimal pricing decisions under the decentralized and centralized decision and analyze the influence of online reviews and in-sale service on dual-channel supply chain. Finally, the authors design a profit-sharing coordination mechanism.

The results show that the optimal online direct selling price is positively correlated with product perceived quality obtained from online reviews and negatively correlated with the in-sale service. The traditional retail price is positively correlated with the in-sale service and weakly correlated with online reviews. For the manufacturer and retailer, whether decentralized decision or coordination contract, their profits increase with the increase of the in-sale service in a certain range and quality perceived from spontaneous online reviews. Online reviews and in-sale service are important factors on consumers’ purchase decisions. Positive in-sale services and online reviews can provide consumers with a better shopping experience, thereby promoting their enthusiasm for shopping and improving their quality of life. The two-part tariff coordination mechanism improves the profits of the manufacturer and the traditional retailer, respectively, through the transfer fee.

The proposed approach can well analyze the channel conflicts and pricing problems between retailers and manufacturers with respect to product offline price and online price. The analysis and results can inform decision-making for manufacturers and retailers.

An increasing number of Danish municipalities wish to minimize tax avoidance due to profit shifting in their public procurement. To facilitate this effort, this study aims to develop a firm-level indicator to assess the potential risk of profit shifting (PS-risk) from Danish subsidiaries of multinational corporations to subsidiaries in low-tax jurisdictions.

Drawing from previous research, PS-risk is assumed to depend on the maximum difference in the effective corporate tax rate between the Danish subsidiary and other subsidiaries under the global ultimate owner, in conjunction with the tax regulations relevant to profit shifting. The top 400 contractors in Danish municipalities from 2017 to 2019 are identified and their relative PS-risk is estimated by combining information about corporate ownership structure with country-specific information on corporate tax rates, tax regulations and profit shifting from three independent data sets.

The PS-risk estimates are highly significantly positively correlated across the data sets and show that 17%–23% of the total procurement sum of the Danish municipalities has been spent on contracts with corporations having a medium to high PS-risk. On average, PS-risk is highest for large non-Scandinavian multinational contractors in sectors such as construction, health and information processing.

Danish public procurers may use the indicator to screen potential suppliers and, if procurement regulations permit, to ensure high-PS-risk bidders document their tax practices.

The PS-risk indicator is novel, and to the best of the authors’ knowledge, the analysis provides the first estimate of PS-risk in Danish public procurement.

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.

Channel coordination has become an essential part of researching hotel supply chain management practices. This paper develops an improved channel coordination approach to coordinate the profit distribution between hotels and online travel agencies (OTAs) achieved through an introduction of advertising fees. This direction further improves the decentralization of cooperation and achieves Pareto improvement to achieve mutual profitability.

The methodology used in this study involves Stackelberg game theory employed for the decision-making and analysis of both the hotel and OTA. The OTA, acting as the leader, offers a hotel a contract specifying the commission rate that the hotel will pay to the respective OTA. The hotel, acting as a follower, sets a self-interested room rate as a given response. A deterministic, price-sensitive linear demand function is utilized to derive possible analytical solutions once centralized, noncooperative decentralization and cooperative decentralized channel occurs.

Results show that a new channel coordination approach is possible, namely via advertising fees. Prior to channel coordination, the OTA tends to set a higher commission rate, and the hotel sets a higher room rate in response under noncooperative decentralization. As such, this results in a lower channel-wide profit for all. One way to reduce channel-wide profit loss is to use a method of cooperative decentralization, which can, and will result in optimal profit as centralization takes place. However, the lack of incentives makes cooperative decentralization unfeasible. Further improvement is possible by using advertising fees based on a cooperative decentralization agreement, which can reach Pareto improvement.

This paper helps the OTA industry and hotel owners cooperate by way of smoother coordination. This study provides practitioners with two important practical implications. The first one is that the coordination between the hotel industry and OTA through cooperative decentralization allows for the achievement of higher profitability than that of noncooperative decentralization. The second one is that this paper solves the outstanding problem of insufficient incentives characteristic of cooperative decentralization by means of an advertising fee as a new supply chain coordination approach.

This paper offers both the problem and solution regarding the lack of incentives that hamper cooperative decentralization without the use of advertising fees. This paper is unique in that it derives analytical solutions regarding commissions levied in a typical hotel supply chain under noncooperative decentralization.

This paper forms an e-commerce supply chain that include a manufacturer providing products and an online platform providing service. The reselling platform mode and the agent platform mode are considered through an exploration of the manufacturer Stackelberg (MS), vertical Nash (VN), platform Stackelberg (PS) power structures. The purpose of this paper is to explore the pricing and platform service decisions under different platform selling modes and channel power structures.

Based on the game theory models, this paper investigates the interaction between the manufacturer and the online platform under four different scenarios. The optimal solutions of four models are provided. Through comparison analyses, this paper evaluates the impacts of platform selling mode and channel power structure on the pricing and platform service decisions and the members’ profits.

The manufacturer prefers the MS power structure in any platform mode. The online platform prefers the PS (MS) power structure under a low (high) service cost efficiency in the reselling platform mode, while prefers the PS and VN power structures in the agent platform mode. Moreover, the manufacturer prefers the agent (reselling) platform mode under a low (high) service cost efficiency in any power structure. The online platform prefers the reselling platform mode in the MS and PS power structures, while prefers the reselling (agent) platform mode under a low (high) service cost efficiency in the VN power structures.

The analysis result provides important managerial implications that help the supply chain members develop a better understanding of the selection of the platform selling mode and the effect of the channel power structure in the presence of platform service.

Good management strives to align and corporate processes for more attention being paid to supply chain management. Firms realize that greater co-operation and improved coordination can help to manage the entire supply chain more efficiently. The imperfect quality item is one of the most important issues that affect the expected profit of green supply chain. The imprecise cost with screening process of poor quality items posed in supply chain is the subject of this study.

The present study explores production model for imperfect items having uncertain cost parameters with three-layer supply chain encompassing supplier, manufacturer and retailer. The model is considering the impact of business tactics such as order size, production rate, production cost and appropriate times in various sectors on collaborative marketing systems. Due to imprecise cost parameters, the pentagonal fuzzy numbers are set to fuzzify the total cost and defuzzifition by using graded mean integration.

This study offers an explicit condition in uncertain environment to manage the imperfect quality item to increase the potential profit of the supply chain. The influence of changes in parameter values on the optimal inventory policy under fuzziness is provided managerial insights.

This model makes a significant contribution to fuzzy inference. The results of the study provide a trading strategy for the industry to avoid losses. The prescribed study can be suitable for the industries like sculpture, jewelry, pottery, etc.