Research On Information Sharing Strategies And Coordination Mechanisms In Dual-channel Supply Chain

It’s known to all that with the rapid development of electronic commerce, it hasalready brought great change and impact to traditional ways of distribution. Theinternet is now introduced as a new distribution channel by more and more companiesto increase their market share, enhance their competitiveness as well as to create morebusiness opportunities and profits. However, along with all these benefits andopportunities from the introduction of online channel based on electronic commerce,more challenges appear. For instance, it will compete with the traditional retailchannels, leading to the inefficiency of the supply chain system, and thus damagingthe interests of the member companies.When the demand in the dual channel supply chain is uncertain, how muchrevenue information sharing can bring each node of the supply chain as well as thewhole supply chain? This question will be the focus of the dissertation. Thisdissertation assesses that a two-echelon supply chain consists of a manufacturer with adirect channel and a retailer with a traditional channel, and we consider the model andframe under three cases: the case where the retailer takes no action to the directchannel, the case where the retailer enhances the value of goods and services, and thecase where the manufacturer shares part of the revenue of direct channel with theretailer. Then we compared the performance in symmetric information case to theperformance in asymmetric information case, and then study the conditions requiredfor the retailer actively participating in information sharing. Comparing to the existingresearches, this dissertation considered the situation that the retailer copes withcompetitions by adding service value based on the traditional retail channels. Thisinnovation makes the environment we studied in this dissertation more close to theactual situation. Furthermore, we considered how to establish a kind of incentivemechanism for retailers to share information with manufacturers. Fina lly, wediscussed the influence coefficient has to the supply chain partners by usingMathematica. We found that, however the retailer reacts to the direct channel of themanufacturer, informationsharingalways has a positive impact on the manufacturer’sperformance, and the retailer would be motivated to share its private information withthe manufacturer under certain conditions. In other cases, the manufacturer mayprovide part of his benefit as reward to motivate the retailer to realize informationsharing.