Agricultural Supplier's Online Sale Mode Choice Under Dual-channel Supply Chain

In this paper, we make a major contribution by examining an agricultural supplier's online sale mode choice. That is, for the supplier, which online sale mode should be adopted, his own online store, an online retailer, or a bricks-and-clicks retailer? To end this, we first study the price decisions under the three kinds of possible online sale modes. We then compare the price decisions among these modes. We find that when the supplier adopts his own online store, the online and offline price are both lowest in these modes. Based on it, we compare the supplier's profits and find that the mode of adopting his own online store can always lead the supplier to get higher performance. That is, if the supplier has the ability to operate his own online store, he'd better set up his own online store. Lastly, we use numerical examples to illustrate our analytic findings and gain more insights.