Demand information acquisition strategy in a dual channel supply chain

Abstract

This article examines the information acquisition strategy of a dual‐channel supply chain, in which a manufacturer sells a product both through a retailer and through its own direct channel. Either the manufacturer or the retailer can acquire demand information from a third‐party marketing research company. The manufacturer first decides whether or not to acquire such information, and then the retailer decides whether or not to acquire information. This setup implies a signaling game (either the manufacturer or the retailer may have private demand information) with an endogenous information structure. We identify conditions under which neither of the firms will acquire demand information, even when the cost of implementation is negligible. We also show that information acquisition can have a negative impact on the retailer, the supply chain, customers, and society. The manufacturer who acquires information always prefers to share information with the retailer, which benefits the retailer. The retailer who acquires information, however, may not want to share information with the manufacturer. The managerial insight of our paper is that firms that have more accurate demand data must develop strategies for the appropriate use of that information, both in their own planning and within the context of their dual‐channel supply chain.

Effects of green supplier integration and development in competing supply chains

“…Because the GSD indicators such as energy savings, pollution discharges and product recycling rates are difficult to quantify, consumers cannot directly compare the greenness degrees of the two products, but will be more likely to buy the product with better greenness degree (Bian et al, 2020; Hong et al, 2023). Similar to Chen et al (2023) and Fang and Zhao (2023), manufacturer $$$ i $$$ sells the product directly to consumers at a retail price $$$ {p}_i $$$, which increases with the increase in the GSD investment level $$$ {g}_i $$$. Hence, considering the GSD investment level $$$ {g}_i $$$, the inverse demand function of manufacturer $$$ i $$$ becomes (2) as follows: $$$$ {p}_i=A-{q}_i-{bq}_j+\theta {g}_i,\mathrm{for}\ i=1,2\ \mathrm{and}\ j=3-i, $$$$ where $$$ \theta $$$ is the market greenness sensitivity of the GSD investment level to the price (Hong & Guo, 2019; Xin et al, 2022).…”

“…Because the GSD indicators such as energy savings, pollution discharges and product recycling rates are difficult to quantify, consumers cannot directly compare the greenness degrees of the two products, but will be more likely to buy the product with better greenness degree Hong et al, 2023). Similar to Chen et al (2023) and Fang and , manufacturer i sells the product directly to consumers at a retail price p i , which increases with the increase in the GSD investment level g i . Hence, considering the GSD investment level g i , the inverse demand function of manufacturer i becomes (2) as follows:…”

Pricing strategies for shared manufacturing platform considering cooperative advertising based on differential game

“…Huo and Wu [ 35 ] studied the competitive advertising strategy in the context of a dual-channel supply chain and obtained the impact of advertising investment. Chen and Zhang [ 36 ] studied the advertising investment of manufacturers and retailers under the dual-channel supply chain of brand competition, which consists of electronic direct sales channels and traditional retail channels. Wang et al [ 37 ] studied the bilateral vertical cooperative advertising problem in a dual-channel supply chain by using Stackelberg game models.…”

“…Assumption 3. Accounting the convexity of advertising costs [ 36 ], it is assumed that advertising cost is a convex function of advertising. Under the traditional cooperation model, the cost of the manufacturer and the shared manufacturing platform should be where , are the cost of advertising effort of the manufacturer and the shared manufacturing platform at time t and is a convex function of advertising investment; L M , L C >0 are the cost coefficients of the advertising effort of the manufacturer and the shared manufacturing platform.…”