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<p style='text-indent:20px;'>We characterize outsourcing strategies and their interaction between the incumbent manufacturer and the new entrant in a supply chain with the common supplier. The incumbent manufacturer and the supplier can provide the critical components to the entrant, and we will investigate how the incumbent manufacturer competes with the new entrant and whether the common supplier can benefit from the new outsourcing. We find the incumbent benefits from the new entrant's outsourcing to a monopoly supplier, and it is rational and more profitable for the incumbent to cooperate with the new one. Then, we analyze the supplier's response to the incumbent's strategic behavior and reveal that a rational supplier would offer the incumbent a more favorable price. Counter-intuitively, the supplier may benefit if the entrant possesses more bargaining power.</p>

Purpose Responding to the store brand (SB) introduction by the retailer, the manufacturer may adopt the strategic choice of incorporating the fairness concern behavior of the retailer. This paper aims to examine how the manufacturer can counteract the retailer’s SB introduction by strategically choosing to or not to incorporating the retailer’s fairness concern. Design/methodology/approach This paper considers the SB introduction problem in a two-echelon supply chain consisting of one manufacturer and one retailer with fairness concern behavior. This paper resolves the pricing strategies under four strategic scenarios regarding fairness concern incorporation and SB introduction and examine the influences from the fairness concern on pricing strategies and profits. This paper further investigates the strategic choice equilibrium of the manufacturer and retailer on fairness concern and SB introduction decision. Findings The results show that the retailer can be better off by the introduction of the SB only when the acceptance degree of the SB is high enough. And whether the manufacturer should incorporate the retailer's fairness concern depends on the consumer's acceptance of the SB: Only when the consumer's acceptance is moderate, the manufacturer is able to counteract the SB by strategically not incorporating the retailer’s fairness concern behavior. Otherwise, the manufacturer cannot prevent the retailer from introducing the SB and can be better off by incorporating the retailer’s fairness concern behavior. Originality/value This paper contributes to the literature by examining whether the manufacturer can adopt the strategic incorporation of the retailer's fairness concern to counteract the retailer's SB introduction.