Motivated by the practice that some e-tailers cooperate with third-party store channel providers for buy-online-and-return-in-store (BORS) services, we investigate competing e-tailers’ BORS adoption strategies. Specifically, we consider a model where two homogenous e-tailers compete in a market. Each e-tailer sells one horizontally differentiated product to consumers through their online channel. E-tailers can cooperate with an exogenous third-party store channel provider in the market to offer BORS. They need to decide whether to offer BORS and then their retail prices. Results reveal that e-tailers will likely adopt BORS when consumer’s online return cost and e-tailer differentiation are relatively large. Otherwise, e-tailers may choose to dismiss it. In terms of profitability, on the one hand, BORS introduction by both e-tailers does not affect their expected profits. On the other hand, BORS introduction by one e-tailer only benefits the one who offers BORS at most or may lead to a lose-lose outcome. Moreover, the basic model has also been extended to two complex cases, considering more third-party store channel providers and more e-tailers.

出于一些电子零售商与第三方商店渠道提供商合作提供在线购买和退货（BORS）服务的惯例的激励，我们研究了竞争的电子零售商的BORS采用策略。具体来说，我们考虑一个模型，其中两个同质的电子零售商在市场中竞争。每个电子零售商都通过其在线渠道向消费者出售一种横向差异化的产品。电子零售商可以与市场上的外部第三方商店渠道提供商合作以提供BORS。他们需要确定是否提供BORS，然后确定其零售价格。结果显示，当消费者的在线退货成本和电子零售商差异较大时，电子零售商可能会采用BORS。否则，电子零售商可以选择将其关闭。一方面，在盈利能力方面，两个电子零售商引入的BORS都不会影响他们的预期利润。另一方面，一个电子零售商介绍BORS只会使最多提供BORS的人受益，或者可能导致失败的结果。此外，考虑到更多的第三方商店渠道提供商和更多的电子零售商，基本模型也已扩展到两个复杂的案例。