Research On Effects Of Information Disclosure Strategy In Multi-attribute Reverse Auction : Suppliers’ Perspective

Only taking the price factor into account, the traditional single-attribute reverse auction has failed to satisfy the diversified requirements of the purchasers on the commodities or services in addition to squeezing the suppliers out of profits. However the proposal of the multi-attribute reverse auction has solved preliminarily the problems found in both of the suppliers and the purchasers in a single-attribute reverse auction. With the in-depth study and the wide application of the multi-attribute reverse auction, the information disclosure problem found in the multi-attribute reverse auction begins to attract people’s attention. Then the main purpose of this study is to discuss the influence of the different information disclosure strategies taken by the purchaser on the profits made by the suppliers in the context of multi-attribute reverse auction.Starting from the perspective of the suppliers, this paper has constructed separately a supplier profit model for the multi-attribute reverse auction based on the following three information disclosure elements, including the purchaser’s preferences, the number of the suppliers in a real-time auction and the tender offer. Through the simulation experiment, it has verified further the conclusions made in the model analysis, summarizing the negative effects of information disclosure on the supplier, analyzing the reasons for the emergence of such negative effects and proposing the countermeasures that can be taken by the suppliers based on all of these. In this paper, the following conclusions have been made after the research:(1) With the strategy for the disclosure of true preferences, less profit will be made by the supplier with the increase in the coefficient of the scoring function for the disclosure made by the purchaser. However with the strategy for the disclosure of untrue preferences, the cost of the purchaser will be artificially high to reduce the profit when the coefficient of the scoring function is greater than the purchaser’s true preference. However when the coefficient of the scoring function is lower than the purchaser’s true preference, hidden cost will be incurred to the supplier to increase the profit.(2) Actually with the increase in the number of the suppliers who have participated in the real-time auction disclosed by the purchaser, the supplier’s profit will shrink.(3) The disclosure of the bidding price will affect the supplier confidence function with the increase in the confidence function leading to the increase in the supplier’s profit. With the negative effects brought by information disclosure to the supplier, the countermeasures that can be taken by the supplier include: the conspiracy with the suppliers, the adverse selection of the purchasers, the establishment of a trust mechanism based on the feedback evaluation system, the establishment and development of the cooperative relationship between the supplier and the purchaser as well as the enhancement of the enterprise competitiveness etc.