With the continuous development of Internet, online pharmaceutical channels in many countries have seen rapid expansion. As a result, pharmaceutical supply chain participants can adopt dual channels, namely, both online channels and offline channels. As online channels compete with traditional offline channels, it is of great relevance to study the potential conflicts and coordination between them, which is the focus of this paper. Specifically, this article develops a susceptible-infected-susceptible epidemic model of the dual channels for a pharmaceutical supply chain. Our main findings are that in a competitive situation, there is a positive stable equilibrium. Furthermore, increasing the rate of influence of offline transmission, online transmission, and cross transmission will improve sales. Moreover, improving the transmission influence rate will turn more potential customers into purchasers, increase channel sales, and achieve dual channel coordination. We then conduct numerical analysis to illustrate and complement the findings from the model. Finally, we provide managerial insights for implementing successful dual-channel pharmaceutical supply chains.
Keywords: dual channels; pharmaceutical supply chain; supply chain coordination; susceptible-infected-susceptible epidemic model.