Seller Channel Choice and Optimal Pricing on Heterogeneous Platforms under Online Price Comparison System

This paper studies the channel choice and pricing strategy for sellers who are facing heterogeneous e-commerce platforms under the price comparison system. In such a system, consumers can see the sales information of the same product on different platforms, so they will compare and choose between different sellers and platforms. This paper portrays the behaviors of consumer's price comparing and builds a decision model of sellers in different channel selection modes which are based on the demand functions of consumer utility and Hotelling model. The optimal pricing and maximum profit of the sellers in different selection patterns will be obtained by solving the model and the final results can provide a decision-making reference for sellers who are in the face of similar situations.