Platform aggregation has become an important organizational form in service supply chains, enabling service providers to simultaneously operate proprietary channels and participate in third-party aggregation platforms. However, while the dual-channel structure creates opportunities for market expansion, it also introduces managerial challenges related to channel competition and demand migration. To address these issues, this paper develops a game-theoretic model of a dual-channel service supply chain under platform aggregation competition to investigate joint pricing and service investment decisions. In the proposed model, a dominant service provider operates both a proprietary channel and an aggregated channel, whereas a competing provider participates only through the aggregation platform. Based on a spatial competition framework, endogenous service investment is incorporated into the decision-making process to derive the optimal pricing strategies, service investment level, and market demand allocation. The results show that service investment not only mitigates demand cannibalization between channels but also strengthens the dominant provider’s competitive pressure on rivals. Moreover, the relationship between pricing and service investment is jointly influenced by platform commission rates and users’ recognition of the aggregation platform, resulting in either strategic complementarity or strategic substitution. Furthermore, the study identifies the equilibrium boundary conditions for dual-channel coexistence and proprietary-channel dominance. The findings provide theoretical support and managerial implications for channel operations and resource allocation in platform aggregation environments.

In the context of multichannel retailing, the phenomenon of web-rooming, where consumers research online and purchase offline, has become widespread. Therefore, we consider supply chain consisting of a manufacturer, an e-commerce platform, and an offline retailer, we study the impact of consumer web-rooming effect on the three sales modes of online channels, which are directly operated by the manufacturer, resold by the e-commerce platform, or co-exist with direct operation and resale, and comparatively analyze the pricing, demand, and profit of each channel under the three modes. The conditions for optimal pricing decisions are further explored through numerical simulation. It is found that profit always increases whether the online channel is opened by the manufacturer or the e-commerce company. The coexistence of direct sales and resale does not always increase profit for offline retailers, which must be discussed in the context of the sales model before channel expansion. The existence of web-rooming not only affects the decision-making of manufacturers and e-commerce platforms, but also always harms the interests of e-commerce platforms, and as the intensity of web-rooming deepens, the revenue of e-commerce platforms becomes smaller. Offline retailers benefit from web-rooming and experience a slowdown in profit growth as the intensity of the phenomenon increases. For manufacturers, the impact of changes in the intensity of the web-rooming is analyzed in relation to platform commission rates and online retail prices.

This study aims to find a way to alleviate or eliminate the negative impact of showrooming on brick-and-mortar retailers. Therefore, under careful consideration of the effects of intershowrooming and intrashowrooming, this study explores whether retailers can effectively solve the negative impact of showrooming by opening online channels. Conduct a comparative study on the decision-making of dual/multi-channel supply chain members before and after the retailer opens an online channel and analyze the influence. In addition, we also explored the impact of factors such as the market scale expansion effect and internet market power structure. Research has found that regardless of the market scale expansion effect generated, it is effective for the retailer to increase profits by opening an online channel. The impact of market scale expansion is not entirely beneficial to the retailer. Under the intrashowrooming, the effect of market scale expansion may benefit the manufacturer. But what is more noteworthy is that for the manufacturer, the impact of intrashowrooming is not necessarily the greater, the better, and the manufacturer's profit may decrease as this effect increases.