Investment Incentives and Relative Bargaining Power in a Multiproduct Distribution Channel
研究了多产品分销渠道中零售商投资对竞争产品需求的影响，发现供应商的相对议价能力决定投资效率、市场份额和利润，与单供应商模型不同。
Distribution channels featuring a common retailer that sells competing products and makes long-term, strategic investments are widespread. Within this context, the authors study retailer investments that have differential impacts on demand for competing products, which implies that the retailer might intentionally weaken a strong supplier's bargaining position with its investment by helping a weak supplier's product become more competitive in the consumer market. The analyses show that the relative bargaining powers of suppliers who do not directly interact determine investment efficiency, product market shares, firm and channel profit, and consumer surplus. This is in contrast with single-supplier settings, where the supplier's absolute bargaining power determines the retailer's investment incentives and resulting outcomes. In further contrast to single-supplier models, the findings show that investment can be efficient (inefficient) when the investing retailer has limited (full) bargaining power, inefficiencies can manifest as under- or overinvestment, and a supplier benefits when competing suppliers have more bargaining power vis-à-vis the retailer. The insights extend to supplier investments, product-specific investments, and repeated sequential investments and contribute to the ongoing discourse on channel management with multilateral bargaining, backward integration, dominant retailers and suppliers, and consumer surplus.