In recent studies of channel competition, it has been found that channel intermediaries reduce the intensity of direct competition between manufacturers. The underlying channel structure in most studies consists of two manufacturers and two retailers each of whom sells only manufacturer's product exclusively. This paper adds to this growing literature of channel competition by analyzing a channel structure with two competing manufacturers and one intermediary (a common retailer) that sells manufacturers' products. Unlike some exclusive dealers or retail outlets of a manufacturer, however, a common retailer is often a powerful player in the market. This paper studies three noncooperative games of different power structures between the two manufacturers and the retailer, i.e., two Stackelberg and one Nash games. It is shown that some of the results depend critically on the form of the demand function. With a linear demand function, a manufacturer is better off by maintaining exclusive dealers while a retailer has an incentive to deal with several producers. All channel members as well as consumers are better off when no one dominates the market. The common retailer benefits more than the manufacturers do from a symmetric decrease in the manufacturing cost. As products are less differentiated, all channel members' prices and profits increase: a counterintuitive result. When the demand function is nonlinear, however, an exclusive dealer channel provides higher profits to all than a common retailer channel given a power structure. As products are more differentiated, a manufacturer's profit decreases when a common retailer is used, but increases when an exclusive dealer is used. These results underscore the importance of choosing a correct demand function for a channel decision.channels of distribution, competition, game theory, pricing

The lack of attention to sustainability, as a concept with multiple dimensions, has presented a developmental gap in green marketing literature, sustainability, and marketing literature for decades. Based on the established premise of customer-corporate (C-C) identification, in which consumers respond favorably to companies with corporate social responsibility initiatives that they identify with, we propose that consumers would respond similarly to companies with sustainability initiatives. We postulate that consumers care about protecting and preserving favorable economic environments (an economic dimension of sustainability) as much as they care about natural environments. Thus, we investigate how two sustainability dimensions (i.e., environmental and economic) and price can influence consumer responses. Using an experimental method, we demonstrate that consumers favor sustainability in both dimensions by giving positive evaluations of the company and purchase intent. In addition, consumers respond more negatively to poor company sustainability than to high company sustainability. In comparison, consumers respond more negatively to the company's poor commitment to caring for the environment than to the company's poor commitment to economic sustainability. We also find that consumers do not respond favorably to low prices when they have information about the firm's poor environmental sustainability. Finally, we find support for an interaction effect between consumer support for sustainability and corporate sustainability; that is, consumers evaluate a company more favorably if the company shares the consumers' social causes. Overall, we conclude, from our empirical study, support for the idea that consumers do respond to multiple dimensions of sustainability.

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Researchers have studied many variables to understand consumer behavior and the choices consumers make, with regard to environmentally friendly products. Past research has tried to find the relationships between socio-demographic variables and preferences for environmentally sustainable products. The findings, however, are still relatively mixed, especially those concerning income; previous results are far from being conclusive in that past studies have found income to be negatively, positively, and insignificantly related to green consumer choices. This study investigates why the previous empirical studies of income are so varied, and, using an empirical study, demonstrates that the inconsistency of earlier findings might come from the non-linear relationship between income variables and environmental concern.