Have Your Cake and Eat It? Price Discount Programs under the Membership Free Shipping Policy in Online Retailing

IF 5.1 3区 管理学 Q1 BUSINESS
Zhipeng Tang, Guowei Hua, Tai Chiu Edwin Cheng, Xiaowei Li, Jingxin Dong
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引用次数: 0

Abstract

Online retailers offer free shipping services, such as threshold free shipping (TFS) and membership free shipping (MFS), to promote sales and provide a better shopping experience to consumers in online retailing. Although MFS attracts more member-consumers, it encourages consumers to place more small orders than TFS, which significantly increases the operational costs of the online retailer. To address this issue, we propose two price discount policies under the MFS service, namely the limited-time discount and the threshold discount. Then, we build analytical models under these two policies to explore the impacts of offering price discounts on the retailer’s profit and consumers’ welfare. We find that no matter which discount policy is adopted, consumers are more likely to consolidate several small orders from different time periods into a big one to obtain the discount. The economies of scale generated by consumers consolidating their orders under these discount policies can help reduce online retailers’ operational costs. Therefore, regardless of any discount policy offered by the online retailer under the MFS service, consumers will place more big orders and more member-consumers are attracted, i.e., the online retailer can have its cake and eat it too. Our research findings provide decision-making insights for practitioners who offer free shipping services and price discounts to consumers in online retailing.
既要蛋糕又要它?网上零售中会员免运费政策下的价格折扣计划
在线零售商提供免运费服务,如门槛免运费(TFS)和会员免运费(MFS),以促进销售并为在线零售消费者提供更好的购物体验。虽然 MFS 吸引了更多的会员消费者,但与 TFS 相比,它鼓励消费者下更多的小订单,这大大增加了在线零售商的运营成本。针对这一问题,我们提出了 MFS 服务下的两种价格折扣政策,即限时折扣和门槛折扣。然后,我们建立了这两种政策下的分析模型,探讨了提供价格折扣对零售商利润和消费者福利的影响。我们发现,无论采用哪种折扣政策,消费者都更倾向于将不同时段的几个小订单合并成一个大订单,以获得折扣。在这些折扣政策下,消费者合并订单所产生的规模经济有助于降低在线零售商的运营成本。因此,无论网络零售商在 MFS 服务下提供何种折扣政策,消费者都会下更多的大订单,吸引更多的会员消费者,即网络零售商可以吃到自己的蛋糕。我们的研究结果为在网上零售中向消费者提供免运费服务和价格折扣的从业者提供了决策启示。
本文章由计算机程序翻译,如有差异,请以英文原文为准。
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来源期刊
CiteScore
9.50
自引率
3.60%
发文量
67
期刊介绍: The Journal of Theoretical and Applied Electronic Commerce Research (JTAER) has been created to allow researchers, academicians and other professionals an agile and flexible channel of communication in which to share and debate new ideas and emerging technologies concerned with this rapidly evolving field. Business practices, social, cultural and legal concerns, personal privacy and security, communications technologies, mobile connectivity are among the important elements of electronic commerce and are becoming ever more relevant in everyday life. JTAER will assist in extending and improving the use of electronic commerce for the benefit of our society.
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