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Chinese Journal of Management Science ›› 2025, Vol. 33 ›› Issue (3): 277-286.doi: 10.16381/j.cnki.issn1003-207x.2022.1048

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Pricing Strategies Considering Logistics Service Efforts on the Online Freight Platform

Xiaolong Guo, Tingting Tang, Zenghui Su()   

  1. School of Management,University of Science and Technology of China,Hefei 230026,China
  • Received:2022-05-11 Revised:2022-10-26 Online:2025-03-25 Published:2025-04-07
  • Contact: Zenghui Su E-mail:szh0822@mail.ustc.edu.cn

Abstract:

With the rapid development of the online freight platforms, they provide two transport modes as a new solution for manufacturers’ logistics outsourcing, namely “Uploading the Source of Goods” and “Finding Trucks to Transport Goods”. During the transportation of goods, a higher logistics service effort level can reduce waste of resource and improve transport efficiency. Considering logistics service effort, a tripartite game model of manufacturer, online freight platform, and retailer is described to study their decisions and pricing strategies. By solving the model, equilibrium outcomes are characterized, including effort level, prices, profits, consumer surplus, and social welfare. Meanwhile compareing the equilibrium outcomes under several cases to investigate the impact of the logistic service effort. Moreover comparing the cases with and without logistic service effort, it is found that when considering the logistics service effort, the goods’ selling price, wholesale price, and transportation price will decrease, in which case consumer surplus and social welfare will increase. The findings also indicate that making logistics service effort cannot always improve the profits of the participants. The sharing ratio of logistics service effort cost has an important impact on the mode choice of the online freight platform and the manufacturer. It is found that in the mode “Uploading the Source of Goods”, the online freight platform is more beneficial when it pays a smaller proportion of the cost of logistics service effort; while in the mode “Finding Trucks to Transport Goods”, the manufacturer is more beneficial when it pays a smaller proportion of the cost of logistics service effort. The interval of cost-sharing proportion for the win-win situation between the manufacturer and the online freight platform is shown under different transport modes. Furthermore, the existence of the logistics service effort tends to benefit the retailer all the time, and it is more likely to increase the online freight platform’s profit than the manufacturer’s profit.

Key words: online freight platform, logistics service effort level, supply chain pricing

CLC Number: