Online Retailers' Reorder Category Optimal Strategy based on Platform Inventory Financing

With the development of platform economy, the inventory financing business provided by the platform has been more and more practiced in recent years. This paper studies the optimal operation strategy of online retailers and platform in inventory financing business. we compare the optimal operation strategies of online retailers under two different ordering behaviours. Online retailers obtain financing by pledging low-risk and low-yield inventory (1) order inventory product A or (2) order other high-risk and high-yield product B. In this process, we have come to several important conclusions. First of all, when ordering inventory product, A, the online retailer will no longer finance if the inventory exceeds the limit. Because more inventory is not always beneficial to the online retailer, when need to pay the interest to platform. Secondly, we obtain the optimal interest rate model of the platform under different ordering strategies of online retailers, and find that even if the same number of product A are pledged, the optimal interest rate of the platform under the two ordering strategies is also different. This requires the platform to consider the ordering strategy of online retailers after inventory financing. Third, the financing services provided by the platform not only increase the financing income, but also greatly increase the fee income.