Abstract:

In the digital transformation of the retail industry， store brands of e-commerce platforms have emerged to compete with sellers’ national brands. Owing to their substantial information advantage， platforms can implement personalized pricing. However， the third-party sellers lack enough consumer information for personalized pricing. They are either confined by their limited data gathering and analysis capabilities or have restricted access to consumer information. Although some platforms share information with sellers， this practice exerts a dual impact on platform revenue： on one hand， it may indirectly benefit the platform through the increase in seller’ profits； on the other hand， it may lead to a decline in the platform’s profits due to price competition.​Furthermore， the store brand products launched by platforms are often positioned as lower-quality alternatives to national brand products. Relying on the operation model of self-production and self-marketing or direct cooperation with suppliers， these store brands possess significant advantages in terms of cost and price， they have gradually become an unignorable competitive force.​ Motivated by this perspective， in the context of the quality and produce cost differences between the e-commerce platform’s store brand products and the seller’s national brand products， the interaction between the platform’s information sharing strategy and the pricing strategies （personalized pricing and uniform pricing） of both parties is explored by constructing a vertically differentiated model， and the impact of different pricing strategies on consumer surplus and social welfare levels is analyzed.The results show that when the platform does not share the information， the platform may not obtain additional benefits from its information advantage. Only when the commission rate is low， or when the commission rate is relatively low and the competitive advantage of store brand products is relatively significant， can platforms gain profits by using their information advantages to implement personalized pricing. When existing information sharing contract， there are not only cases where both the platform and sellers adopt personalized pricing， but also possible cases where the platform shares information with sellers to support them in implementing personalized pricing while the platform itself uses uniform pricing. There may even be cases where the platform shares information to help sellers to conduct personalized pricing and withdraws from the market itself. If the commission rate is at a high level， information sharing causes sellers’ personalized pricing behavior to harm consumer surplus and social welfare. If the commission rate is relatively high and the cost difference between brands is also relatively high， both the platform and sellers adopt personalized pricing when platform shares information. In this case， the intense competition leads to lower selling prices， which increases both consumer surplus and the level of social welfare.

Key words: online platform, store brand, information sharing, personalized pricing