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Improving product nutrition has become an increasingly important area of innovation in the food and beverage industry. However, the contribution made by a product’s nutritional quality to the firm’s bottom line has been little studied. To fill this gap, we first developed an analytical model to study the relationship between a product’s nutritional quality and the firm’s profit, and then investigated the role of package innovation and advertising in this relationship. The results show that a product’s nutritional quality has a concave relationship with the firm’s profit, and that the relationship is influenced positively by both package innovation and advertising. Finally, we empirically examined product nutrition across a wide range of product categories and corresponding firms’ profits over multiple years to test if the results derived from our analytical models hold for empirical data from real businesses. Furthermore, we empirically investigated how a new product’s nutritional quality impacts the firm’s stock return after the product’s introduction.

The paper proposes different supply chain contexts where one manufacturer sells the same product to two retailers, one traditional and one online. The first context is when two retailers are distinct entities and the second context is when a dominant manufacturer owns and controls the traditional retailer. In each context, we study a no cooperation scenario versus various cooperation strategies (namely the minimum pricing strategy, the whole channel price, and the revenue sharing cooperation). Besides, we investigate the use of a dual channel by the online retailer via a mobile channel and a computer channel. The online retailer could use the same price online or a price differentiation (called also personalized pricing) depending on where the purchase is done. Our results show the crucial role of the product compatibility to the web and the mobile baseline incremental sales in influencing the performance of each channel member.

When the manufacturer opens an online channel to compete with its retailer, effective mechanisms need to be utilized to coordinate the O2O (online to offline) distributions and thus higher profits can be achieved for all supply chain players. We first propose two mechanisms, which are the manufacturer's financial support in reward points to the retailer and the profit sharing, for the supply chain players to employ in order to mitigate the O2O competition and create a Pareto result. Our results show that the manufacturer's financial support in reward points to the retailer mechanism does alleviate the O2O competition and help improve the profit of each supply chain player; however, the retailer is reluctant to cooperate with the manufacturer to implement a profit sharing. We then propose a novel mechanism, which is the combination of the manufacturer's financial support in reward points to the retailer with the profit sharing, to coordinate the O2O distributions. Our results show that such a mechanism effectively solves the issue of O2O competition and creates much higher profits for supply chain players. Furthermore, our results also show that compared to the simultaneous mode, the leader-follower Stackelberg mode provides no competitive advantage to the manufacturer or the retailer when the combination of the manufacturer's financial support in reward points to the retailer with the profit sharing is utilized to coordinate the O2O distributions.

Return policy is a strategic tool widely used by firms to build long-term relationship with their consumers. We develop a novel O2O (online to offline) competition model to address how the competitive return policies can be employed to coordinate the O2O distributions under the manufacturer – traditional retailer supply chain where the manufacturer opens an online channel to compete with the traditional retailer. Our results show that utilizing the revenue sharing plus profit sharing mechanisms, the manufacturer and the traditional retailer can employ different return policies for their respective channels to coordinate the O2O distributions and achieve a Pareto solution for all parties in a manufacturer - traditional retailer supply chain. Particularly when the product is becoming increasingly compatible with online sales, the value of the differential of return policies would further increase for both the manufacturer and the retailer.

In this research, we consider a supplier-e-tailer supply chain where the e-tailer offers a full return policy (i.e., full refund) to its consumers and both the supplier and the e-tailer have their own information about the product demand of online selling. In this setting, we investigate what effective mechanism can be utilized to motivate the supplier and the e-tailer to share their information and also eliminate information distortion simultaneously, and how the e-tailer's return policy impacts the value of information sharing. Our results show that when the two-part tariff mechanism is implemented, both the supplier and the e-tailer would share their information conditionally. As a result, both the supplier and the e-tailer have their motivations to distort the shared information. However, the cooperative wholesale price with profit sharing is an effective mechanism to be utilized to motivate the supplier and the e-tailer to share their information truthfully and create a win-win solution. Furthermore, our results show that comparing to the two-part tariff mechanism, the cooperative wholesale price mechanism has a competitive advantage to help both the supplier and the e-tailer achieve higher profits. In addition, our results also indicate that both the supplier and the e-tailer have stronger motivation to implement an information sharing arrangement when a full return policy is offered to consumers.

In this paper, we investigate an under-researched issue by examining the financial performances of both partner firms in a brand alliance. We find that a participating firm's brand value and other brand characteristics are associated with not only its own financial performance but also its partner's financial gains from the collaboration. Our results show that the participating firm gains higher stock returns when its partner's brand value is higher. However, brand value differential reduces the positive effect of brand value on the partner firm's financial performance. In addition, the primary partner's brand alliance experience helps increase the positive effect of primary partner's brand value on the stock returns of the secondary partner. The secondary partner's brand exploitation attenuates the positive effect of secondary partner's brand value on the stock returns of the primary brand firm.

We study the context of one private label (PL) competing against one national brand (NB) through a unique retailer. We propose a novel utility-demand function that includes the consumer's brand valuation, the retail prices, and the brands' qualities. We investigate the effect of the NB local advertising strategy on supply chain players' profits when either one of the players supports the advertising. Also, we explore the role of prior information about the manufacturer's incentive function on supply chain players' behaviors. We show that although the support for advertising from either the manufacturer or the retailer is Pareto improving, the manufacturer prefers to incite the retailer to invest in local NB advertising through profit sharing instead of using its money to counter the threat of the PL. Furthermore, we also show that the wholesale price incentive motivating the retailer to invest further in advertising is not preferred as expected, and all supply chain players are better off without prior information about the manufacturer's behavior in the context of branding competition and advertising-level dependent incentive.

There has been a scarcity of research that studies the value of product return information to supply chain firms. In this research, we assume that the online retailer has the product return information but the manufacturer does not. Our results show that a two-part price contract can motivate the online retailer to share its private information only under certain condition, but the revenue sharing contract plus profit split mechanism always is a valuable strategy to be utilized to seek sharing the online retailer's private information and create a Pareto result. Particularly when the product is highly compatible with online sales, the manufacturer has a strong motivation to seek sharing the online retailer's information. A follow-up empirical study investigates what information can be used to predict product returns and is valuable to be shared with the manufacturer. Through sharing the product return information, both the manufacturer and the online retailer can achieve a higher performance.

In this research, we develop a fresh analytical model to examine the impact of brand quality on the firms’ performances when two firms selling substitute products form a brand alliance. Our results indicate that when two products have equal brand qualities, brand alliance is always a beneficial strategy for two firms to employ. However, when two products have different brand qualities, brand quality differential shows a positive relationship with the profit of the firm with the low-quality brand but demonstrates a negative relationship with the profit of the firm with the high-quality brand in the brand alliance. Our results also show that brand quality differential has a greater effect on the profit of the firm with the high-quality brand than on that of the firm with the low-quality brand. In addition, we find that brand alliance becomes much more valuable to the firm with the high-quality brand when the brand quality differential decreases, but the value of brand alliance has a concave relationship with the profit of the firm with the low-quality brand when the brand quality differential increases.

E-tailers normally have more accurate information regarding their products and services than consumers due to the nature of online transactions. To reduce consumers’ concerns of hidden information, e-tailers can use lenient return policies to attempt to signal high product and service quality. This research proposes a model to investigate the signaling effect of two components of return policy, return window—short return window vs. long return window and return depth—full refund vs. partial refund, on product quality and service quality. Data was collected using an online survey and analyzed using structural equation modeling. The results show that both a long return window and a full refund signal high service quality, which then positively affects purchase intention. When it comes to product quality, return window does not have a signaling effect, while the signaling effect of return depth is moderated by service quality.

When the manufacturer distributes his products through online and traditional channels, what type of innovative marketing strategy can be utilized to solve the channel conflict and improve the performances of all channel members? Our research addresses this important question by initiating a triple cooperative strategy for channel members to employ in a manufacturer – retailer dual-channel supply chain. Our results show that when the product is less compatible with online channel than with traditional channel, channel members can utilize a triple cooperative strategy to improve channel coordination and their individual performances effectively and efficiently. First, the manufacturer can utilize supportive retail sales effort as a valuable coordination mechanism to improve the performances of all channel members in the dual-channel distribution. Second, a channel coordinative price strategy can be utilized to further improve the performance of whole channel. Finally, a profit sharing mechanism is needed to create a Pareto result for both the manufacturer and the retailer. Furthermore, we extend our model to study the value of triple cooperative strategy in a manufacturer – two competitive retailers supply chain and derive the optimum marketing strategy.

We assume a manufacturer–retailer supply chain where the manufacturer opens an online channel and provides a monetary support to the retailer to implement a local advertising campaign. Both the manufacturer and the retailer have their own information about the state of market demand. We thus examine the value of manufacturer's cooperative advertising and its strategic influence on information sharing of the manufacturer and the retailer. Our results show that the manufacturer's cooperative advertising coordinates the dual-channel distributions effectively and helps improve the channel performance under the environment of demand uncertainty. However, the manufacturer's cooperative advertising also stimulates the retailer to distort its information while the manufacturer has a motivation to understate its forecast. Hence, an advertising agency should be employed to verify the shared information and help make an optimal investment in advertising, so that information distortion can be eliminated and optimum results can be achieved.

The Internet’s popularity and success have shaped new relationships in B2B market. The use of dual channels becomes a widespread practice and new challenges face channel members. We assess the benefit of two coordinating mechanisms namely the whole-channel price and the quantity discount when a manufacturer sells his product through a traditional and an online store and uses a single wholesale price for both retailers. Then, we extend the analysis to two-wholesale pricing scenario. Our model suggests that product compatibility to the web is a key factor impacting the decision to coordinate the channel or not and which coordination mechanism to use. We found also that the whole channel is always better-off when coordination is implemented though channel members have different positions with regards to such decision. Hence, a profit-sharing mechanism is required to satisfy all members. Finally, we analyze the effect of varying channel substitutability on channel members’ profitability.

Following the increasing popularity of private brands, national brands׳ manufacturers are using many strategies either to counter the threat of these brands or to collaborate with retailers. We investigate the benefit of using national brand׳s advertising (the aggressive strategy) that hurts the private label׳s demand over using national brand׳s revenue sharing (the partnership strategy) that fosters collaboration between the retailer and the national brand׳s manufacturer. We compare each strategy to the benchmark case where none of these strategies is used and where both brands (national and private brands) are offered through a unique retailer. We find that when the national brand׳s revenue sharing is implemented, the manufacturer and the whole chain are gaining compared to the benchmark case but the retailer is always losing. Thus, a profit sharing mechanism is needed to split the increased profit and achieve a Pareto result for all channel members. Furthermore, although the strategy of national brand׳s advertising is always beneficial to the manufacturer, it is not beneficial to the whole channel when the private label has low differentiation. Finally, the retailer could benefit from national brand׳s advertising depending on the private label׳s concept and other factors.

Information sharing between firms has been cited as a major means to improve firm performance. This paper develops a conceptual framework that relates information sharing to firm profitability in a duopoly market. The framework allows each firm to have its own private information about uncertain market demand. We utilize a game-theoretical model to examine this framework. Our results reveal that information sharing has no uniform effect on firm performance. Firms behaving in the Bertrand mode benefit from information sharing only under certain conditions. However, firms behaving in the Stackelberg mode always benefit from information sharing. Further, we examine how the value of information sharing is affected by the nature of firm, the product brand, and the degree of product differentiation. Our results show that when two firms have high level of customer satisfaction, offer products with reputable brands, or sell products that are strongly substituted in the market, information sharing becomes significantly important and imperative to both firms. Particularly if two firms behave in a Stackelberg mode, the value of information sharing further increases. Furthermore, we also address the issue of information distortion and propose EDI (Electronic Data Interchange) information system with a nonnegative matrix-factorization technique as an effective and valuable mechanism to eliminate any possible information distortion, so that both firms can share their forecast information truthfully. Information becomes a critical resource to the success of a firm.Information sharing of competing firms is becoming increasingly prevalent.Information sharing shows different influences on the performance of a firm acting in different modes.Information could be distorted while sharing information.Valuable mechanism is needed to eliminate information distortion.

When a manufacturer opens an online channel to compete with its retailer, how can the channel conflict be resolved and the relationship between channel members be improved? Our research proposes supportive retail services as an effective incentive to coordinate the dual-channel distribution and govern the relationship between channel members. We use a profit-maximization model to show that supportive retail services can be utilized to alleviate dual-channel competition and achieve a Pareto result for all channel members. As product compatibility with the web changes, the manufacturer's financial support for retail services also changes. When the product is more compatible with the web, the manufacturer would like to offer more financial support as an effective incentive to the retailer to improve its retail services. However, the value of supportive retail services always increases for the manufacturer but first increases and then decreases for the retailer as product compatibility with the web increases.

This research addresses the strategic effect of a newly added online channel on a manufacturer’s supportive advertising expenditure once a manufacturer opts to open an online channel to compete with its retailer. We first study the manufacturer–traditional retailer supply chain and consider three different scenarios: (1) product is less compatible with the online channel than with the traditional channel; (2) product is more compatible with the online channel than with the traditional channel; (3) product has the same compatibility with the online channel as with the traditional channel. Our results show that the added online channel significantly impacts the manufacturer’s investment in supportive advertising. Depending on the different product categories, the impact of the newly added online channel on the supportive advertising expenditure also will be different. Furthermore, we extend our model to study the manufacturer–online retailer supply chain and investigate the effect of that added online channel on the manufacturer’s supportive advertising to the online retailer. Based on our results, the manufacturer can utilize our findings to improve its decision-making when it plans to open an online channel to improve its product distribution.

While e-commerce is growing, returns are proving to be a major problem for e-tailers (i.e. internet retailers). We argue that e-tailers׳ return policies play a strategic influence on consumer behavior. Specifically, we focus on the effect of return depth - full return policy (FRP) vs. partial return policy (PRP) – on consumer׳s perceived fairness of return policy and purchase intention. Using a structural equation model (SEM), we empirically show that an e-tailer׳s return depth has a positive influence on the consumer׳s perceived fairness of the return policy and purchase intention. Further, e-tailer׳ competition and its reputation significantly moderate the relationships between the return policy depth and the perception of the return policy׳s fairness and purchase intention. Finally, we discuss the theoretical and managerial implications of our results.

This study investigates the strategic influence of product complementarity and advertising on the success of bundling products. We use a profit maximization model to show that when a firm sells bundled products, both the product complementarity and advertising significantly impact the performance of bundled products. The bundling strategy with advertising can help firm achieve higher performance than the bundling strategy without advertising. However, the price discount to the identical products must be attractive to customers and the degree of product complementarity to the complementary products must be large enough, and then the bundling strategy with advertising can obtain a success in the market. Furthermore, our results also show that when the degree of the complementarity between two products increases, firm should invest less on advertising to promote the bundled products. Based on our results, we propose optimal marketing strategies for firms to adopt. Firm managers can utilize our findings to plan their bundling strategies wisely.

With the rapid development of e-commerce, many manufacturers nowadays opt to open an online channel to engage in direct online sales. The mix of retailing with an online channel adds a new dimension of competition and complementarity to a product's distribution channels. Our model focuses on the strategic effect of the manufacturer's national advertising on alleviating the channel competition. We use a game-theoretical model to show that opening an online channel with the added national advertising effectively alleviates the channel conflict and thus helps improve the whole channel and each channel member performance. Depending on the different product categories and the degree of channel substitutability, the manufacturer's investment in the national advertising also will be different. The value of national advertising increases as product is more compatible with online sales and channel substitutability increases.

The paper provides a framework to help the weak retailer delineate the circumstances that allow him to benefit from an alliance between the dominant retailer and the common manufacturer. We use a game-theoretic model to determine the optimal pricing and service strategies when channel members act independently then when the dominant retailer forms an alliance with the manufacturer. We find that: (i) the alliance is formed only if the market is not strongly competitive in terms of price, (ii) differentiation in terms of price and service is beneficial to all channel members under alliance, (iii) an interaction between spillover and service effects plays a crucial role to make the weak retailer gain or lose from the alliance.

Prior research has investigated consumers’ perceptions of nutritional information but does not detail how the use of nutrition claims on product packages maybe associated with a manufacturer's financial performance. Using data from 38 firms, the authors find evidence that a firm's stock market performance and sales relate significantly and positively to both the degree of nutritional emphasis and the specificity of nutrition claims on product packages but relate negatively to the diversity of nutrition claims the company uses across its products. The findings provide important managerial implications to help businesses obtain financial gains through the use of nutrition claims. They also suggest that aligning the labeling policy could be a profitable long-term route for marketers, and it is necessary for policy makers to pay attention to firm performance. The insights regarding the economic benefits of using nutrition claims from a marketing–finance perspective provide further implications for policy makers to encourage firms to offer nutritious products and make nutrition information more accessible for consumers.

The authors’ paper addresses the applications of data mining within the healthcare industry. Healthcare data are seen as one of the more rewarding and most difficult of all data to analyze. Proper data mining techniques provide the methodology and technology to transform the voluminous amounts of data into useful information for decision making. Data mining can be utilized to help find cures for existing diseases, uncovering patterns for genetic diseases and the causes of new diseases across the globe. By implementing data mining techniques the industry is finally gaining control over the inadequacy of readily available records. Data mining has been used in patient care, healthcare plans, and administration. By utilizing these methods, hospitals and healthcare insurance providers alike are able to save millions of dollars, administration headaches, and most importantly, countless lives.

In order to maintain their competitive edges in the market, high-tech firms cannot simply rely on superior technology alone. In addition, due to rapid technological changes, market demands in the high-tech industries have become volatile and difficult to forecast. This study proposes an option (i.e. franchising) that high-tech firms can use in order to expand their markets and improve firm performance. We also utilize a Bayesian forecasting methodology in order to address information sharing between the franchisor and franchisee. Our study demonstrates how high-tech franchising firms can benefit from information sharing of demand forecasts when franchising in order to enhance franchise performance. We also show that a profit sharing mechanism that results in optimal profits for the franchisor and franchisee. The study fills the research gaps that currently exist in the franchising literature and provides important managerial implications for practitioners in B2B markets.

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to provide a framework to help the manufacturers to find the optimal decisions regarding the choice of channel member for information sharing.Design/methodology/approachA game‐theoretical model plus Bayesian forecasting is developed to determine the optimal decisions for the manufacturer.FindingsThe results show that the optimal strategy for the manufacturer is to engage in information sharing with one small retailer exclusively, such that the manufacturer can gain the most benefit from information sharing arrangement in a marketing channel with a dominant retailer.Research limitations/implicationsThe present study is analyzed by a theoretical model. Future research can explore the same study by collecting data to engage in an empirical test.Practical implicationsThis paper provides a useful model framework and pricing strategy for upstream manufacturers who are engaging or planning to engage in information sharing with their retailers.Originality/valueThis paper provides practical and solid advice and examples demonstrating the optimal decisions regarding the choice of channel member for information sharing to best benefit of the manufacturer.

We propose a game-theoretic model in three contexts. First, only the national brand (NB) is offered through a traditional retailer. Second, the private label (PL) is introduced by the traditional retailer. Finally, the NB's manufacturer opens an online store. We reassess the benefit of introducing the PL and investigate the profitability of implementing an online store. We found that the retailer is not always enjoying the PL's introduction. Also, the manufacturer could benefit from that strategy. The quality differential between the NB and the PL, the PL's potential and the cross-price competitions are all important factors to determine the result of PL's introduction. Hence, the manufacturer opens the online store either to counter the threat of such strategy or to expand his market.