Does a Store Brand Always Hurt the Manufacturer of a Competing National Brand?

• 成果类型: Article
• 署名作者: Ru, Jun; Shi, Ruixia; Zhang, Jun
• 署名单位: State University of New York (SUNY) System; University at Buffalo, SUNY; California State University System; California State University Fullerton; Fudan University
• 刊物名称: PRODUCTION AND OPERATIONS MANAGEMENT
• ISSN/ISSBN: 1059-1478
• DOI: 10.1111/poms.12220
• 发表日期: 2015
• 页码: 272-286
• 关键词: supply chain conflict; private labels; price-competition; Buyer power; retailer; performance; preferences; reduction; consumers; margins

摘要

It is generally believed that store brands hurt the manufacturers of competing national brands while benefiting retailers. In this study, we challenge this notion by studying the impacts of a store brand when it is introduced by a power retailer. We show that a store brand may benefit the manufacturer when the interaction between the manufacturer and retailer is modeled as a retailer-led Stackelberg game. This phenomenon occurs because the store brand changes the nature of the strategic interaction between the manufacturer and retailer in our model. In particular, while the interaction is always vertical strategic substitutability without a store brand, it may become vertical strategic independence with one. With the store brand, the demand for the national brand becomes larger, and the wholesale price for the national brand may increase, both of which benefit the manufacturer. Finally, the store brand may lessen the double marginalization problem of the supply chain for the national brand in the retailer-led Stackelberg game, but does so in an unconventional way: The reduction in the double marginalization effect may come from a lowered retail markup instead of a lowered wholesale price. Our results reconcile some discrepancies between theoretical predictions and empirical findings regarding the impacts of store brands on manufacturers.