More and more online manufacturers showcase products in retailers’ stores which are regarded as physical showrooms to resolve product fit uncertainty, and retailers provide retail service with private information. To satisfy consumers’ heterogeneous demands, retailers may introduce competing products. This paper focuses on an online manufacturer’s response to a retailer’s competing product introduction strategy under physical showroom cooperation. We find that the impacts of product competition on the online manufacturer’s and the retailer’s profits are inconsistent. When product competition harms the retailer but benefits the online manufacturer, the online manufacturer would encourage the retailer to introduce the competing product; otherwise, the online manufacturer would discourage the introduction of the competing product. Furthermore, the interaction between product competition with information asymmetry is investigated. The results show that although the online manufacturer always suffers loss from asymmetric information, the competing product introduction reduces its cost to identify the information under certain conditions.

越来越多的在线制造商在零售商的商店中展示产品，这些产品被视为解决产品适合性不确定性的实体展厅，并且零售商向零售服务提供私人信息。为了满足消费者的多样化需求，零售商可以推出竞争产品。本文重点讨论在线制造商在实体陈列室合作下对零售商竞争性产品引进策略的反应。我们发现产品竞争对在线制造商和零售商利润的影响是不一致的。当产品竞争损害零售商但使在线制造商受益时，在线制造商会鼓励零售商介绍竞争产品；否则，在线制造商将不鼓励引入竞争产品。此外，研究了产品竞争与信息不对称之间的相互作用。结果表明，尽管在线制造商总是因信息不对称而遭受损失，但竞争性产品的引入降低了在特定条件下识别信息的成本。