Strategic introduction of the marketplace channel considering logistics costs and product information

In recent years, it is prevalent that reselling-first online retailers share their online marketplace with suppliers. Such marketplace introduction strategy leads fickle consumers to have more options. Both the logistics costs of products and product information of channels primarily affect consumers' behavior and retailers' profits. From the perspective of retailers, the strategy is not clear. Motivated by the observation, we develop a retailer-Stackelberg game model to investigate the introduction of the marketplace in the interaction of logistics cost-value (LCV) ratio and product information. Our analytical results indicate that effectively deliver of product information has a positive effect on retail prices. Moreover, after the marketplace channel enter, the changes in consumer demand varies by product categories with differing LCV ratio. Note that, we show that the introduction is more beneficial for retailers whose product information is more available. Under this situation, the suppliers who have a low (respectively, high) information delivery efficiency and sell the product with big (respectively, small) LCV ratio is not welcome by retailers. In addition, when the marketplace product information is more available, retailers are more likely to open the platform for the big LCV ratio product. Our findings not only provide the suggestions for reselling-first online retailers who want to introduce and manage marketplace channel but also contribute to the literature of marketplace and online multichannel supply chain.