Title
Dominance, bargaining power and service platform performance.
Abstract
In this paper we study the relationship between a firm (hotel) and a service platform (Ctrip.com). We start with a newsvendor hotel facing two kinds of customers. D-customers order the room directly from the hotel front desk; C-customers order the room through Ctrip.com. Ctrip.com charges the hotel while introducing its members to the hotel. The hotel decides how many rooms are allotted to Ctrip.com to achieve optimal profit. We consider the situation where one party’s demand cannot be observed by another, and study the commonly used wholesale price contract. Interestingly, the contract can always coordinate the system. We then investigate the influence of bargaining power on the profit division under situations where Ctrip.com and hotel, respectively, dominate the system, and find that increasing (or decreasing) a party’s bargaining power without considering the other does not necessarily benefit (or damage) the first party. Further, we discuss how the parties choose dominance and appropriate bargaining power to make a trade-off for better cooperation. An interesting phenomenon is that bargaining power for each party can be identical when any party dominates the system. We also propose a threshold at which the wholesale price contracts can always be the Pareto optimal for the channel.
Year
DOI
Venue
2016
10.1057/jors.2015.44
JORS
Keywords
Field
DocType
service platform,reservation room,newsvendor,bargaining power,centralization and decentralization,dominance
Newsvendor model,Economics,Bargaining power,Microeconomics,Communication channel,Pareto optimal,Phenomenon,Operations management,Desk
Journal
Volume
Issue
ISSN
67
2
0160-5682
Citations 
PageRank 
References 
1
0.35
8
Authors
4
Name
Order
Citations
PageRank
Jiahong Zhang110.35
yong zha2103.95
Xiaohang Yue39812.03
Zhongsheng Hua474055.13