Abstract:

With the vigorous development of e-commerce， brand owners from all walks of life are selling their products through different types of e-commerce platforms. But what follows is that the very common product counterfeit phenomenon in reality is rampant in e-commerce channels. E-commerce platforms such as Taobao and Pinduoduo have become the main channels for counterfeit intrusion and sales. Therefore， e-commerce platforms are divided into two types： brand-oriented type and price-oriented type. Among them， the brand-oriented e-commerce platforms always promise that the products they sells are authentic， while the price-oriented e-commerce platforms have no such commitment. Some brand owners （such as Adidas， NIKE， etc.） only choose to sell on brand-oriented e-commerce platforms （such as Vipshop， JD （self operated）， etc.）， while some other brand owners （such as Shuangxing， Guirenniao， etc.） additionally choose to sell on price-oriented e-commerce platforms （such as Taobao， Juanpiwang， etc.）. Two kinds of e-commerce platform channel strategies that brand owners can choose are considered： single-platform channel strategy and dual-platform channel strategy. Considering counterfeit intrusion and heterogeneous e-commerce platforms， several multi-stage game models are established under different situations， such as whether the counterfeit invasion exists or not and the brand owner adopts single-platform or dual-platform channel strategy. Our goals are to analyze how brand owner can cope with counterfeit invasion to ensure his profits when counterfeits seriously threaten their profitability and sustainable development in the online market， how brand owner affects the profits of all parties when choosing two different channel strategies， and how brand owner can take measures to cooperate with e-commerce platforms to prevent counterfeit invasion. It is shown that in the case of no counterfeit invasion， the brand owner always chooses dual-platform channel strategy. However， in the case of counterfeit invasion， when the difference coefficient of product quality is small， the brand owner will choose the single-platform channel strategy， and the possibility of making this choice is positively correlated with the brand difference coefficient of the two e-commerce platforms. The counterfeit invasion always damages the profit of the brand owner， but only when the brand owner chooses the single-platform channel strategy it will also damage the profit of the brand-oriented e-commerce platform. In fact， extensive numerical studies are conducted to confirm the above conclusions. In particular， through our analysis， it is found that if the brand owner chooses the single-platform channel strategy， he can successfully prevent the counterfeit invasion by charging a certain franchise fee to the brand-oriented e-commerce platform. Similarly， if the brand owner chooses the dual-platform channel strategy， he can also successfully prevent the counterfeit invasion by paying a certain channel fee to the price-oriented e-commerce platform.

Key words: counterfeit invasion, heterogeneous e-commerce platforms, brand owner, channel strategy, two-part tariff