Different from local sales, offering free shipping can be a strategic decision for the retailers/brands who sell products to overseas customers. This also significantly influences the carrier’s pricing decisions because of tax policies in different countries/regions. In this paper, we consider customers’ preference for free shipping and investigate two competing retailers’ free shipping decisions when they rely on a common carrier for cross-border logistics services. We focus on the impact of retail price competition and the carrier’s tax cost, which shows uniqueness in the shipping industry. We derive the supply chain parties’ optimal decisions by the general equilibrium theory and analyze their free shipping incentives based on game-theoretical models. We find that, if the carrier is non-resident, given one retailer’s free shipping, the other one would follow the step when the retail price competition is mild and the carrier faces small tax disparity. Interestingly, the carrier will benefit from the two retailers’ free shipping when the retail price competition is fierce and the tax disparity is small. If the carrier is resident and both retailers offer free shipping, we find that all supply chain parties will be beneficial, resulting in a win–win–win situation.

与本地销售不同，提供免费送货可能​​是向海外客户销售产品的零售商/品牌的战略决策。由于不同国家/地区的税收政策，这也显着影响了运营商的定价决策。在本文中，我们考虑了客户对免费送货的偏好，并调查了两家竞争零售商在依赖公共承运人提供跨境物流服务时的免费送货决策。我们关注零售价格竞争和承运人税收成本的影响，这在航运业中表现出独特性。我们通过一般均衡理论推导出供应链各方的最优决策，并基于博弈论模型分析他们的免费送货激励。我们发现，如果承运人是非居民，给定一个零售商的免费送货，另一种将在零售价格竞争温和且承运人面临较小的税收差异时采取措施。有趣的是，当零售价格竞争激烈且税收差异较小时，承运人将受益于两家零售商的免费送货。如果承运人是居民，并且两家零售商都提供免费送货，我们发现所有供应链各方都将受益，从而形成双赢局面。