Complexity and implications on channel conflict under the uncertain impacts of online customer reviews

With the development of e-commerce, the channel conflict between online channel and traditional channel becomes more and more salient. While the literature on channel conflict is abundant, the increasingly significant impacts of online customer reviews are rarely considered. Inspired by this, this paper investigates this channel conflict under the impacts of online customer reviews in a dual-channel supply chain, where channel conflict is represented by a dynamic competition between online retailer and traditional retailer, and online customer reviews affect potential customers’ purchase decisions by providing information about retail prices in both channels. What is more, the uncertain impacts of online customer reviews are adopted to be consistent with the reality. On this basis, the stability of equilibrium point, complexity of channel conflict and retailers’ profits are analyzed under two scenarios, depending on whether retailers have distribution information about the uncertain impacts or not. The results highlight the complexity of channel conflict under the impacts of online customer reviews and provide some implications for retailers to cope with online customer reviews.

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