Economic analysis of the supplier-reseller symbiotic competition in an online distribution business

The Internet brings suppliers unprecedented opportunity of selling directly to consumers, a trend predicted as disintermediation (Malone et al. 1987). However, the coexistence of online reseller channels and direct channels leads to a subtle relationship between suppliers and online resellers, that is, the two parties cooperate as well as compete with each other. In this paper, we build a game-theoretical model to examine the relationship of …