How a platform's private label interacts with a manufacturer's financing strategy
研究了电商平台引入自有品牌后，资金受限的制造商在银行融资与平台融资之间的选择变化，发现当生产成本中等且自有品牌质量感知低时，制造商会转向平台融资，而平台可能选择不引入自有品牌以促进合作。
Recently, major e-commerce retailers like Amazon and Alibaba have started providing working capital loans to capital-constrained manufacturers selling through their marketplaces. Additionally, these platforms often introduce private labels (PLs), such as Amazon Basics, that compete with manufacturers' brands. This leads to a coopetative partnership between platforms and these small and medium enterprises, such as LonoLife, which compete with the platforms' PLs and also avail loans from them. Using game-theoretic analyses, we investigate the following question: How does the platform's PL introduction strategy impact a capital-constrained manufacturer's financing decision? The manufacturer manages the operational risk in its manufacturing process while selecting the optimal financing strategy, with or without the platform's PL. Intuitively, if the platform introduces the PL, as a strategic response, the manufacturer should consider opting for bank financing. However, the manufacturer does the opposite by switching to platform financing when the values of the production cost are within the intermediate range and the perceived quality of PL is low. Interestingly, the platform might adopt a cooperative strategy by not introducing the PL if the manufacturer decides to use platform financing. We recommend that the platform can utilise its PL effectively to mitigate operational risk in the upstream production process.