Impact of wholesale price discrimination on the profit of chain members under different channel power structures

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the impact of wholesale price discrimination by a manufacturer on the profitability of chain members in a Retailer—E-tailer dual-channel supply chain for different product categories based on their online channel preference. We have considered two distinct channel power structures in this study, i.e., (i) retailer has higher channel power than the e-tailer and (ii) e-tailer has higher channel power than the retailer. Game-theoretic models are developed to examine the competition between the retailer and e-tailer and to derive their optimal decisions under equal wholesale price strategy and discriminatory wholesale price strategy for the channel power structures considered. Further, a numerical example was employed to quantify the results and to capture the variation with respect to online channel preference of the product. We have found that discriminatory wholesale price strategy is the gainful strategy (i) for a manufacturer dealing with products having high online channel preference under retailer leader structure (ii) for the manufacturer dealing with products having low online channel preference under e-tailer leader structure. Equal wholesale price strategy is the gainful strategy (i) for a manufacturer dealing with products having low online channel preference under retailer leader structure and (ii) for a manufacturer dealing with products having high online channel preference under e-tailer leader structure. The study helps the manufacturers to maximize their profit by adopting the right wholesale price strategy considering the online channel preference of the product and the downstream channel power structure.