In the presence of agency selling in emerging retail platforms, suppliers are motivated to select purely traditional reselling, agency selling or a hybrid distribution channel strategy. In this paper, considering a capacity-constrained supplier facing a retail platform, we examine the equilibrium pricing and ordering decisions in the hybrid channel, and further analyze the impact of limited capacity on the supplier's distribution channel selection as well as equilibrium outcomes. Results show that the hybrid channel always dominates pure agency selling. In comparison to the unlimited capacity setting, we find that limited capacity motivates the supplier to select pure reselling under a low commission rate. However, under a moderate commission rate, moderate capacity motivates the supplier to select the hybrid channel. We also show that, under moderate capacity in the hybrid channel, the retail platform may order all the supplier's capacity and strategically withhold some to avoid downstream competition, and that the impact of commission rate on the capacity thresholds of withholding behavior may be nonmonotonic. Interestingly, we find that moderate capacity may benefit the supplier, the retail platform, and consumers at the same time, creating a win–win–win outcome.

中文翻译：

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面对零售平台，产能对供应商分销渠道选择的影响

在新兴零售平台存在代理销售的情况下，供应商有动力选择纯粹的传统转售、代理销售或混合分销渠道策略。在本文中，考虑面向零售平台的容量受限供应商，我们研究了混合渠道中的均衡定价和订购决策，并进一步分析了有限容量对供应商分销渠道选择以及均衡结果的影响。结果表明，混合渠道始终主导着纯代理销售。与无限产能设置相比，我们发现有限产能促使供应商在低佣金率下选择纯转售。然而，在适度的佣金率下，适度的容量促使供应商选择混合渠道。我们还表明，在混合渠道容量适中的情况下，零售平台可能会订购供应商的所有容量并战略性地扣留一部分以避免下游竞争，并且佣金率对扣留行为的能力阈值的影响可能是非单调的。有趣的是，我们发现适度的产能可能同时使供应商、零售平台和消费者受益，从而创造双赢的结果。