Research On E-commerce Platform’s Demand Information Sharing Strategies With Two Upstream Competing Suppliers

As information flow is an important part of supply chain,optimizing information flow through demand information sharing is an effective measure to promote collaborative development and innovative upgrade of supply chain.In respect of demand information sharing aiming at eliminating information asymmetry existing in the e-commerce supply chain,how to choose an appropriate information sharing strategy has become a crucial issue for the platform with comparative advantage of information.Studies have shown that pure agent mode platforms are motivated to share demand information with upstream suppliers,while pure reseller mode platforms are reluctant to information sharing.However,in consideration of a hybrid mode platform with upstream competing suppliers,the information sharing problem becomes more complicated.Therefore,it is significant to study the vertical information sharing issue in the e-commerce context with channel competition between upstream suppliers in supply chains.This thesis considers a two-level supply chain consisting of an e-commerce platform and two competing suppliers.The platform operating in the hybrid mode of "agent" and "reseller" has the advantage of demand information,and the two upstream suppliers provide substitutable products for consumers on the platform,respectively,through direct channel and indirect channel.With private demand information,the platform can decide whether to share it and,if so,to share it only with the supplier in a specific channel or with both suppliers.In the case of price competition(Bertrand competition)of products,this thesis analyzes the optimal decisions of each member when the platform adopts different information sharing strategies,and then obtains the preference of each member to information sharing strategies through profit comparison.Furthermore,it discusses whether all parties can agree on a specific sharing strategy and whether the overall profits of the supply chain are optimal at this time.Through model building and solution analysis,this thesis finally derives the preferences of the platform and suppliers towards information sharing strategies.It’s found that each party’s preference for information sharing strategy is mainly influenced by the type of actual market demand potential.When the potential market demand is of high type,the platform and suppliers can reach an agreement on the information sharing strategy.In this case,the platform chooses the full information sharing strategy.It is worth noting that the overall profits of the supply chain also reach the maximum under this circumstance.However,when the actual market demand potential is of low type,the two suppliers have different preferences for the information sharing strategy and hence can not reach a consensus.For the platform,her preference for information sharing strategy also depends on the realized value of actual potential market demand.This can be explained that the realized low potential market demand implies the demand uncertainty.Given a fixed high potential market demand,a smaller low potential market demand indicates greater demand variability.The greater the demand variability,the higher the value of the information shared by the platform.In this way,the platform is more willing to sharing information with his revenue sharing partner,i.e.the supplier in agent channel.Compared with existing studies,this thesis focuses on platforms adopting hybrid operation mode.It finally draws a conclusion on all parties’ optimal decisions in equilibrium,considering the impact of supplier competition with channel differences on demand information sharing.It will provide more theoretical support and decision basis for coordinating information sharing in supply chain.