Article Preview
TopIntroduction
China has the largest group of internet users in the world, and the scale of e-commerce is also expanding. The B2C (business to consumer) e-commerce model is when companies sell products and provide services directly to consumers. In recent years, more and more companies have been involved in B2C e-commerce and regard it as a vital online sales channel (Xu et al., 2021). Many suppliers can sell products on the B2C e-commerce platform, which provides technical support and promotion services for suppliers who need to pay a commission to the platform for each unit of product sold there (Fu et al., 2021). TMALL.COM, the major B2C e-commerce platform in China, is a service platform that provides services for suppliers to open flagship stores on it. However, it does not have its own logistics system and is supported by third-party logistics providers. Likewise, JD.COM uses a shopping mall format known as Plan of Open Platform (POP), where the suppliers selling products are identified as the third party. JD.COM has built its own logistics and warehouse capacity that offers an integrated solution to suppliers, including warehousing, transportation, delivery, and customer service (Wang et al., 2019).
With the rapid development of e-commerce, logistics service has become a bottleneck restricting the development of e-commerce (Tsang et al., 2021). On the one hand, the quality of logistics service affects the satisfaction and purchase decisions of consumers (Cotarelo et al., 2021). TMALL.COM has the advantages of complete categories and low rates, but its logistics and service are poor. In contrast, JD.COM has self-built logistics and good service, although it has incomplete categories and a high rate (Li & Zhong, 2021). On the other hand, the free shipping policy is a vital factor that affects the purchase decision of consumers. Generally, consumers are more willing to buy products with free shipping.
A biform game model is designed to formalize the notion of business strategy as making moves to try to shape the competitive environment in a favorable way. It is a two-stage game. The first stage is noncooperative and is designed to describe the strategic moves of the players. Analysis of the second stage then says how much value each player will capture (Wang et al., 2019). The biform game has been used to explain the competitive advantage of broker and investment incentives in supply chains (Feess & Thun, 2014). The biform game model established in this article is a two-stage, three-party game composed of one supplier and two e-commerce platforms. In the first stage, the supplier chooses which platform to cooperate with and the logistics service strategy. The strategy of the supplier does not directly generate revenue; rather, it forms the competitive environment in the second stage. In the second stage, the supplier sells the products on the platform. The platform collects commissions from the supplier at a certain rate and then completes the profit distribution for the two parties.