Abstract: In the context of the Internet economy, many products do not have the characteristics of “shop-selected online shopping”, but manufacturers still impose restrictions on the retail prices of these products (that is, the resale price is maintained), which cannot be explained by the traditional “free-riding” theory. To introduce the concept of intertemporal externalities is to improve and expand the traditional theories. In the case that the products of same brand are distributed by multiple retailers, the repeated consumption characteristics of the product will lead to the intertemporal externality of the retail service, resulting insufficient supply of retail services; this feature is more prominent under the conditions of online retail. The resale price maintenance can improve the retailer’s intertemporal remuneration and stimulate the retail service to achieve the best through increasing the retailer’s reward at the trial consumption stage, and the motivational effect is better than the minimum sales quantity, the fixed sales territory and other vertical restricting means. To take into consideration the impact of the intertemporal externalities during the retail services can coordinate the few classical hypotheses which were regarded as being independent and conflicting, so as to provide further theoretical support to the rational principle suitable for the resale price maintenance.

Key words: trial consumption; loyalty consumption; intertemporal externalities; resale price maintenance