Opaque Selling Optimization Considering Consumer Heterogeneity in Online Retailing

Opaque selling has experienced rapid growth and garnered substantial attention in recent years. By cooperating with an intermediary, service providers introduce an opaque channel that operates alongside their traditional, full information distribution channel. This coexistence of opaque and regular selling enables sellers to segment the market more effectively and implement refined price discrimination strategies. We develop a channel model that explicitly incorporates consumer heterogeneity and employs a Stackelberg game to capture the strategic interactions between the service provider and intermediary in the presence of opaque services. Our analysis yields three key findings. First, opaque selling does not universally enhance the service provider's profit, and regular selling is superior when the market is dominated by leisure consumers with low transaction costs. Second, opaque selling becomes the preferred strategy when a substantial proportion of business consumers are present. Third, a mutually beneficial collaboration between the service provider and intermediary arises only when the intermediary's bargaining power is relatively weak.