Complex Characteristics of Multichannel Household Appliance Supply Chain with the Price Competition

This paper studies the complex characteristics caused by the price competition in multichannel household appliance supply chains. We consider a two-level household appliance supply chain system consisting of a manufacturer with an Internet channel and a retailer with a traditional channel and an Internet channel. Each channel’s price-setting follows the bounded rational decision process in order to obtain the optimal profit or more market share. Considering that the price competition often leads to the demand and order fluctuation, we also investigate the bullwhip effect of the multichannel supply chains on the basis of the order-up-to-inventory policy. From the numerical simulation, we find a system in a chaotic state will suffer larger bullwhip effect than a stable system, and the manufacturer’s Internet channel is helpful to mitigate the bullwhip effect. Our results provide some useful managerial inspirations for the household manufacturer and retailers. Firstly, each channel should make their retail price with a suitable price adjustment speed in the stable region, and each time pricing cannot exceed the domain of attraction. Secondly, the manufacturer can adopt a more radical pricing strategy in their Internet channel to mitigate the bullwhip effect. Thirdly, the price adjustment should be reviewed and be appropriately reduced if the price adjustment is too large.