Abstract: With the development of internet, more and more manufacturers have launched direct channel, such as Huawei, Haier, and Lenovo. If the consumers search for a certain brand name, they are oftentimes led to manufacturer websites. You can browse the product information on its homepage, and then buy the product that you are interested in through the manufacture's referral channel, which called "manufacturer referral". There are two kinds of manufacturer referral strategies:1) referring the customers visiting his homepage to official store (OS); 2) referring the customers to official store and retailers (ORS). It is an amusing question for us to consider which referral strategy is better. Motived by this, we explore the referral strategies of dual-channel manufacturer.
A supply chain consisted of a dual-channel manufacturer and a retailer is investigated. The consumers are grouped into two independent market segments:the traditional market and the referral market. The consumer in the traditional market know both official store and retailer of the manufacture, they purchase a certain product at the retailer or the official store directly. In the referral market, the consumers visit manufacture' websites, then purchase the product by the manufacture's referral channel. The scale of the consumer market is fluctuant in real life due to price, the degree of consumer concern, word of mouth effect, etc. So the following assumptions are proposed:1) the traditional market size is a random variable; 2) both manufacturer and retailer are risk aversion. It is assumed that the manufacturer set the wholesale price and the direct selling price firstly, and then the retailer as a follower decides the retailing price. The decision modes of the manufacturer and the retailer under different scenarios are developed respectively. Then the equilibrium outcomes of the decision models are derived by Stackelberg dynamic game theory.
It is found from the result that:In the benchmark model without risk aversion, when the size of referral market size is small, the manufacturer refers the consumers to official store (OS), but if the referral market size is large, the manufacturer refers the consumers to official store and retailers (ORS). In the case where the retailer is risk aversion, compared with the benchmark, when the referral market size is mediate, if the competitive intensity is weak, with the increase of the retailer' risk aversion degree the referral strategies from OS changing to ORS; if the competitive intensity is large, with the increase of the retailer' risk aversion degree the referral strategies from ORS changing to OS. Under different scenario where the manufacturer is risk aversion, if the referral market size is mediate, with the increasing of risk aversion degree of the manufacturer, the referral strategies is changed from OS to ORS. Finally, the refer strategies are researched under all the supply chain members are risk aversion by numerical example. The paper can enrich and perfect the relevant theories of dual-channel supply chain, and provide some useful guidance for the manufacturer and retailer.

Key words: risk aversion, dual-channel, referral strategies, competitive intensity