Abstract
Marketing channel or distribution channel selection is a key marketing strategy in practice. In contemporary times, many new factors have begun to affect the traditional supplier/buyer relationship, which, in turn, significantly influence a firm’s channel selection decision. In particular, vertically differentiated products, which aim to capture various consumer groups, have been highly visible in many industries throughout the last decades. This dissertation consists of two new approaches to the study of optimal channel selection decisions of firms in the presence of vertically differentiated products. The first approach uses a game-theoretic model to study the interaction between a firm's product line design and channel choice in the context of the national brand and private label. Although both problems have been well studied in extant marketing literature, little attention has been paid to the interactions between these two decisions.Whereas in the first study, it is the national brand manufacturer that decides its marketing or distribution channels, the second study investigates a private label owner's channel selection decision. Private labels often substitute national brands and allow retailers to segment the consumer who visits them. Therefore, in marketing literature, private label products are treated as products sold exclusively in their owners' stores. However, in recent years, several well-known retail chains have begun to sell their private label products through their competitors, which is inconsistent with marketing literature. The second study aims to fill this gap by investigating whether it is optimal for private label owners to develop new distribution channels to sell their products through competitors' stores, and identifies the specific conditions under which they should choose such distribution channels.
| Date of Award | 21 Jun 2016 |
|---|---|
| Original language | English |
| Awarding Institution |
|
| Supervisor | Liwen CHEN (Supervisor) |
Cite this
- Standard