Game-Theoretic Analysis On The Value Of Information Sharing And Supply Chain Coordination

The material flow, information flow and capital flow are all involved in the supply chain. The information sharing would play the important role in the supply chain because its effect on the strategies and profits of the supply chain members. Besides it, there exits the competition and cooperation among supply chain agents. Each firm in the supply chain makes decisions to maximize its profit under competition, and the supply chain is uncoordinated in this situation. While the firms make decisions for chain-wide optimality under cooperation, then the supply chain coordination and chain-wide Pareto optimality are all realized under this situation. The supply chain coordination would also play the important role in the supply chain management. The thesis introduces the supply chain model with dual channels which comprises of the manufacturer M and the retailer R, the game theory is employed to study the value of information sharing and supply chain coordination. They could be stated as follows:1. The retailer R holds the private information about his own cost structure and he can freely determine if he is willing to disclose his cost information to the manufacturer M in this supply chain model. We analyze the equilibrium pricing policies and the equilibrium profits of the firms under both the full information sharing case and no information sharing case based on the Stackelberg game theory. We also compute the value of information sharing.2. The supply chain is coordinated when the parties in the supply chain form the cooperative relationship. The theory of the cooperative game is employed to compute the equilibrium pricing strategies of the firms and the maximal profit of the whole supply chain.3. We investigate the value of supply chain coordination through comparative analysis on the Stackelberg equilibrium solutions and the cooperative equilibrium solutions of the parties in the supply chain.