Purpose Internet referral services are a common form of online marketing operating activities. To incentivize infomediaries and improve referral performance, brand retailers typically apply the cost-per-click (CPC) or the cost-per-sale (CPS) payments. The purpose of this paper is to investigate the effect of referral services on the optimal contract with CPC or CPS payments. Design/methodology/approach This paper studies a mechanism design problem for internet referral services. To maximize the expected utility of the brand retailer, an uncertain contract model is established in which the brand retailer's assessment of the infomediary's referral service capability is characterized as an uncertain variable. Then equivalent models under CPC and CPS payments are presented to obtain the optimal solutions. Findings The results demonstrate that under CPC payments, as the referral service capability increases, the optimal sales volume is increasing, and the optimal transfer payment first shows a declining and then a rising trend. The brand retailer is less likely to raise the optimal transfer payment for the infomediary given a higher CPC revenue-sharing fee percentage, which is counterintuitive. Under CPS payments, the optimal sales volume and transfer payment are also increasing in the referral service capability. In addition, an increase in the click-through rate leads to the infomediary's incremental marginal utility. Originality/value The value of this research is its application of incentive contracts to the internet referral services considering CPC or CPS payments. The results of this research can serve as a guide for retailers and infomediaries in their decision-making around online retailing.
The main reason why supply uncertainty reduces supply chain performance is that it is difficult to estimate whether uncertain supply matches demand. Seldom do papers study retailers' decision-selection problems according to the reliability of uncertain supply in satisfying demand. This paper considers the optimal decision selection of a retailer working with a main supplier facing supply uncertainty and a backup supplier whose yield is infinite or uncertain. The retailer can enforce demand management by adjusting prices, seeking the backup supplier to make up for the lack of products or mixing the two decisions. We provide the definition called the reliability level of serving the market (RLSM) to characterize the reliability of uncertain supply in satisfying market demand. Under different RLSMs, the participants maximize their profits based on a confidence level in three scenarios: benchmark, infinite backup supply and uncertain backup supply. Whether the main supplier determines the wholesale price or not, we find that in the benchmark, the retailer orders from the main supplier if the RLSM is low; otherwise, the retailer gives up purchasing the product. In the latter two scenarios, our results show that the particular order strategy chosen by the retailer depends on the values of the RLSM and that the retailer's order quantity follows threshold rules. It is interesting that for different RLSMs, the retailer chooses either a price adjustment strategy, a backup supply strategy or neither of them but does not choose the mixed one, which is counterintuitive. We also derive the particular scenario that is good for the retailer by comparing the results in the three scenarios. Finally, a proper RLSM is suggested for the retailer to balance the reliability of serving the market and her profit.Mathematics Subject Classification. 90B50, 91A80, 91B06.
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