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Top1. Introduction
With rapid development of information technologies and proposition of the “Internet+” strategic mode, online shopping platforms such as Taobao, Kaola and Amazon have brought more impacts to the traditional retail service industry. Under this background, in order to increase earnings and get adapted to changes in market demands, a lot of manufacturers and retailers have established their online direct selling channels while maintaining traditional sales channels. Manufacturers such as Apple and Huawei and retailers such as Macy’s have formed dual-channel supply chains, which can make up defects of traditional sales channels in time and space. Hence, due to competitive relations between manufacturers and retailers, channel conflicts is inevitable. How to relieve conflicts and contradictions becomes an important issue in supply chain management (Corstjens & Lal, 2000; Pepe et al., 2011).
In production, sales and the dual-channel supply chain of an enterprise, information known by different subjects is asymmetric due to their different positions and roles. Consumers stay at the tail end of a dual-channel supply chain. In comparison with manufacturers and retailers, consumers only have little acquaintance of actual product information, but price information of one of major factors influencing their purchase decisions. In order to gain more consumers, manufacturers and retailers are willing to share promotion information with consumers in a certain form of information disclosure so as to realize growth in sales volume and profits. Current disclosure modes are classified into a manufacturer disclosure mode and a retailer disclosure mode . In the manufacturer disclosure mode, a manufacturer as an information discloser directly discloses product promotion information to customers. In the retailer disclosure mode, the retailer implements disclosure strategies. Then, what are differences of these disclosure modes in the dual-channel supply chain? What influences will different modes bring to disclosure degrees of information and earnings of disclosers? Which mode is more profitable? The paper expects to solve these problems.
By comparing two different modes of information disclosure, the research studies the strategies of promotion information disclosure in a dual-channel supply chain. Under the assumption that online stores are incapable of disclosure, information disclosure strategies of manufacturers and retailers and relevant changes are investigated. Based on comparative analysis, selection decisions on the promotion information disclosure mode and influences of different factors on disclosure strategies of manufacturers and retailers are analyzed.