Pricing Strategies of Multichannel Apparel Supply Chain Based on Showrooming and Information Sharing

Abstract

This paper examines the influence of information forecast accuracy on the profits of the supply chain under the circumstance of a multichannel apparel supply chain. Due to the emergence of multichannel, customer showrooming behavior is becoming increasingly prevalent. For example, consumers usually buy garments online after experiencing the service in the traditional bricks and mortar in the clothing industry. Meanwhile, there are often information barriers between the manufacturer and the retailer, which will affect enterprise decision-making. To solve these problems, this paper mainly investigates the information sharing and customer showrooming phenomenon, which includes four models: no information sharing without showrooming model (NN), information sharing without showrooming model (SN), no information sharing with showrooming model (NS), and information sharing with showrooming model (SS). The numerical analysis shows that under the impact of the forecast error, information sharing between channel members is more favorable than no information sharing when parameters satisfy certain conditions. From the perspectives of the retailer, the manufacturer, and the whole supply chain, customer showrooming behavior will bring them less profit. These conclusions mean that the retailer should share information with the manufacturer and adjust their service level and sales price to alleviate the effect of showrooming.

Optimal Online Service Strategy and Price Decision in Omnichannel Retail

“…e consumers' omnichannel shopping choices have become diversified, and there have been many studies of the consumer shopping process, which include phenomena such as showrooming [25,28] and webrooming [23]. Gensler et al [29] defined showrooming as a cross-channel free-riding behaviour, which meant consumers searching for information at a physical store and purchasing online from a competing retailer.…”