Adoption strategies of E-commerce consumer credit services: A dual-channel competition perspective

This paper investigates the adoption strategy of e-commerce consumer credit services (e-CCS) and its impact on pricing strategies of a dual-channel system consisting of a wholesale platform, an agency platform, and a common supplier. We analyze the interaction between e-CCS strategies and channel modes by constructing a game model with four subgame scenarios: neither channel implements e-CCS (NN), only the wholesale channel provides e-CCS (IN), only the agency channel offers e-CCS (NI), both channels launch e-CCS (II). Our findings reveal that channel forms and e-CCS features significantly influence the adoption of e-CCS. Interestingly, the key influencing factors vary among decision makers. Specifically, the wholesale platform is willing to launch e-CCS as long as the demand benefit is prominent, while the agency platform only offers the service when the bad debt risk rate is mild. Moreover, when the agency platform provides e-CCS, the supplier accepts to use it only when there is a substantial demand benefit. Counterintuitively, we also find that the adoption of e-CCS can generate a positive spillover effect on the rival platform, leading to a “win-win” situation. In addition, we examine the impact of e-CCS on pricing decisions. Our findings indicate that the supplier and the wholesale platform may adopt distinct pricing strategies to address higher bad debt risk. Finally, we demonstrate the robustness of our main findings to investigate the impact of competition intensity, the correlation between demand benefit and price, negative externalities on demand benefit, and consumer heterogeneity on e-CCS.