Abstract: Against the backdrop of manufacturers selling products through e-commerce platforms and considering consumers’ traceability awareness, this paper develops a game-theoretic model to examine whether the platform should introduce a private label and adopt blockchain technology to enhance consumers’ perceived product quality. It explores the platform’s optimal private label introduction strategy under agency scheme and wholesale scheme when the positioning of the private label can be endogenously determined, and analyzes the impact of private label introduction on manufacturer profits and consumer surplus. The findings indicate that, first, when consumers exhibit low traceability awareness, the platform will always introduce a private label. If the cost of adopting blockchain is also low, the platform will use blockchain alongside the private label, and the application of blockchain will widen the horizontal differences between the private label and the national brand. Second, contrary to intuition, the likelihood of the platform introducing a private label under the wholesale scheme is not necessarily higher than under the agency scheme . This is because, under the wholesale scheme, the platform may invest in private label development but ultimately choose not to introduce it. Additionally, the introduction of a private label consistently harms the manufacturer’s interests; however, compared with the agency scheme, manufacturers are more resistant to the platform adopting blockchain in conjunction with private labels under the wholesale scheme model. Finally, numerical analysis shows that introducing a private label increases consumer surplus, whereas the adoption of blockchain does not necessarily yield the same effect.

Key words: consumer traceability awareness, private label, national brand, agency scheme, wholesale scheme

摘要： 针对制造商通过电商平台销售产品的背景，考虑消费者的追溯意识，构建了平台在代销和转销两种模式下是否引入自有品牌以及是否采用区块链技术以提升消费者质量感知的博弈模型。研究了自有品牌定位可内生决策时平台的最优引入策略，并分析了引入自有品牌对制造商及消费者剩余的影响。研究发现：首先，当消费者追溯意识较低时，平台总会引入自有品牌；若区块链采用成本也较低，平台会在引入自有品牌时采用区块链，且区块链的应用会扩大自有品牌与制造商品牌之间的差异。其次，与直觉相悖，在转销模式下平台引入自有品牌的可能性未必高于代销模式，原因在于转销模式下可能出现平台虽投入自有品牌研发却最终放弃引入的情形。同时，自有品牌的引入始终损害制造商利益，但相较于代销模式，转销模式下制造商对平台在引入自有品牌时采用区块链的抵制更强烈。最后，数值分析表明，引入自有品牌能提升消费者剩余，但采用区块链未必能产生类似的提升效果。

关键词: 消费者追溯意识, 自有品牌, 制造商品牌, 代销模式, 转销模式