Relying on the rapid development of information and internet technologies, e-commerce has boomed over the past decade. As a link between manufacturers and consumers, the e-commerce platform has a crucial position in the online retailing market. The e-commerce platform not only provides an online marketplace through which the manufacturers directly sell products to consumers but also purchases and resells manufacturers’ products to consumers. Therefore, when the e-commerce platform provides services to manufacturers, it is faced with the selection of two sales methods: reselling or marketplace. Using a game theoretic model, we focus on the strategic interactions between an e-commerce platform and two brand manufacturers in four different business modes. The results show that the e-commerce platform profits more when both brand manufacturers directly sell products through the online marketplace. From the two brand manufacturers’ points of view, using the e-commerce platform as a reseller is always more profitable than directly selling, no matter which business mode they are in. The above findings have important implications for the selling decisions of the e-commerce platform and brand manufacturers. Furthermore, an interesting and counterintuitive result is that the new brand manufacturer benefits more than the existing brand manufacturer when consumers’ acceptance of the new brand products is becoming lower. When production costs are low, only the two brand manufacturers can achieve a mutually beneficial situation by selling products to the e-commerce platform. Moreover, the competition among brand manufacturers is beneficial to the e-commerce platform. Our research provides a theoretical basis for brand manufacturers and the e-commerce platform to make more rational decisions, and it updates the existing knowledge about brand competition and e-commerce platform’s business mode choices.

Fairness issues have been frequently mentioned in the business world. In the context of today's global e-platform economy, this is more likely to breed fairness concerns due to the inherent power differential between e-platforms and third-party sellers (3P sellers). This article focuses on the impact of fairness concerns and power structures on the performance of supply chain members. In this article, we develop a game-theoretic model consisting of e-platform and 3P seller. The results of this article show that different power structures have different influences on the existence of fairness concerns. When the power structure tends to be balanced, the emergence of fairness concerns reduces the total efficiency of the supply chain system. When the e-platform is in a strong position, the emergence of fairness concerns has no effect on the supply chain system. It is also found that although the fairness concerns of the 3P seller cannot positively affect the supply chain as a whole, for the 3P seller itself, the emergence of fairness concerns can realize the transfer of profit distribution from the e-platform to the 3P seller by resetting the commission. In addition to the contribution of the theoretical part, some management insights are gained in this article. Supply chain members need to pay attention to the relationship management among supply chain members (e.g., fairness concern psychology). From the perspective of resource allocation, fairness and efficiency sometimes cannot coexist, and the stability of the supply chain and overall high efficiency sometimes cannot coexist.

Purpose: With the vigorous development of the e-commerce delivery service industry, delivery service has become an important factor for e-tailers to obtain the market competitive advantage. However, how to choose the best delivery service strategy is a difficult problem for e-tailers in practice. The purpose of this paper is to investigate the effect of delivery service on e-tailers and online platforms.Design/methodology/approach: Based on the Stackelberg game, the research study establishes and solves three models, namely dual self-supporting delivery service model, dual third-party delivery service model and differential delivery service model.Findings: The results show that when the self-supporting and third-party delivery cost coefficients are all small, no matter which delivery service providers the competitor selects, the e-tailer selects delivery with a lower service fee. When the self-supporting and third-party delivery service fee are all low, no matter which delivery service providers the competitor selects, the e-tailer selects delivery with a smaller service cost. Both service fee and service cost determine the choice of e-tailers' delivery strategy. When the commission rate is moderate, both e-tailers are willing to choose the self-supporting delivery strategy, but the platform only prefers to provide self-supporting delivery to them with a lower delivery service sensitivity coefficient.Originality/value: This paper analyzes the optimal delivery service strategies for e-tailers to compete with competitors, and explores the impacts of parameters for e-tailers and online platforms in their decision-making. The findings provide valuable implications for relevant practices.