We consider an e-tailer's upstream supplier who wants to encroach into retailing to earn additional revenue. The supplier needs to decide whether or not to enter the retail market by either selling to consumers on an e-tailer's platform by paying commission fees (agency encroachment) or opening...

The term platform economy refers to a business practice in which online retailers serve as transaction platforms that connect upstream suppliers with downstream buyers. Each transaction platform has a traditional retail channel where a supplier can sell products indirectly to customers. In...

With the boom of e-commerce, express delivery has been increasingly regarded as a bottleneck and key factor for achieving success. Additionally, whether to include such express delivery service or not is an important yet outstandingly unsolved problem for online retailers. In this regard, this...