The Interplay of Manufacturer's Channel Selections and Online Retailing Platform's Information-Sharing Strategies

To explore the interaction between e-tailing platform's information-sharing strategies and manufacturer's channel selections, this article considers three channels including platform self-operated channel (S), direct selling operated channel (D), and reselling operated channel (R), then the information-sharing gaming models are established including no-information sharing (N), complete information sharing (S), sharing information only to manufacturer (SM), and only to reseller (SR). Finally, we construct the static game models between platform and manufacturer under different scenarios and derive the Bayesian Nash equilibriums with mixed strategies. The results find the interesting phenomenon that the direct selling operated channel is not optimal for manufacturer under various information-sharing case. When the identified demands are small, the equilibrium strategies set is {S, N} under lower selling costs, the equilibrium strategies set is {S, S} under moderate selling costs, but the equilibrium strategies set is {R, S} under higher selling costs. When the identified demands are high, the equilibrium strategies set is {S, S} under lower selling costs, but with the rise of costs, the manufacturer gradually switches into reselling operated channel and platform tends not to share information with manufacturer ({R, S}/{R, SM}). Additionally, with higher selling costs, the equilibrium strategies set turns to {S, N}. This study provides direction to platform information-sharing strategies as well as channel management, enriching the related research on platform multichannel operation under information asymmetry conditions.