A Theoretical Bayesian Game Model for the Vendor-Retailer Relation (original) (raw)
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Strategic information sharing in a supply chain
European Journal of Operational Research, 2006
We consider a two-member supply chain that manufactures and sells newsboy-type products and comprises a downstream retailer and an upstream vendor. In this supply chain, the vendor is responsible for making stock-level decisions and holding the inventory, and the retailer is better informed about market demand. In each period, the retailer receives a signal about market demand before the actual demand is realized, and must decide whether to reveal the information to the vendor, at a cost, before the vendor starts production. We assume that any information that the retailer reveals is truthful. We model the situation as a Bayesian game, and find that, in equilibrium, whether the retailer reveals or withholds the information depends on two things-the cost of revealing the information and the nature of market demand signal that the retailer receives. If the cost of sharing the information is sufficiently large, then the retailer will withhold the information from the vendor regardless of the type of signal that is received. If the cost of sharing the information is small, then the retailer will reveal the information to the vendor if a high demand is signaled, but will withhold it from the vendor if a low demand is signaled. In general, reducing the cost of sharing information and increasing the profit margin of either the retailer or the vendor (or reducing the cost of the vendor or retailer) will facilitate information sharing.
Improved Profitability and Competition in Two Level Supply Chain by Non-Cooperative Games
2018
This article by modeling a non-cooperative dynamic game tries to improve profitability and competition. This paper has considered how the manufacturer interacts with multiple competitor distributors. Each distributor also determines the optimal distribution price and inventory replenishment policies to maximize their profits. The issue form a non-cooperative dynamic game. Distributors formulate sub-games and finally, have formed the main game with the manufacturer. After designing the game, we determined the Nash equilibrium. We use the concept of "Nash equilibrium" to analyze supplier, manufacturer and distributor strategies in the overall game with the manufacturer. In order to achieve the Nash equilibrium, we use decisions as input parameters. In this case, each player, in addition to making the right decision, can make decisions in order to prepare for possible changes in the decisions of other actors and thereby maximize their profit. As long as actors are reluctant t...
International Journal of Production Economics, 2012
This paper introduces a new motivation for information sharing in decentralized supply chains-as a mechanism to achieve truthful information sharing and to reduce signaling costs. We study a twoechelon supply chain with one manufacturer selling a homogenous product to n price-setting competing retailers. Each retailer has access to private information about the potential market demand, and the retailers have an ex-ante incentive to share this information with each other and to conceal the information from the manufacturer. However, without a mechanism that induces the retailers to truthful information exchange as their strategic choice, no information can be exchanged via pure communication (cheap talk). To overcome this obstacle, two signaling games are analyzed: in the first game, information is shared truthfully among the retailers; in the second game, information is also shared truthfully with the manufacturer. We show that under some conditions sharing information with the manufacturer results in a higher profit for the retailers.
Mathematical Problems in Engineering, 2012
Decision makers in a supply chain confront two main sources of uncertainty in market environment including uncertainty about customers purchasing behaviors and rival chains strategies. Focusing on competition between two supply chains, it is considered that each customer as an independent player selects products of these chains based on random utility model. Similar to quantal response equilibrium approach, we take account of customer rationality as an exogenous parameter. Moreover, it is assumed that decision makers in a supply chain can perceive an estimation of rival strategies about price and service level formulated in the model by fuzzy strategies. In the competition model, chain’s decision makers consider a subjective probability for wining each customer which is formulated by coupled constraints. These constraints connect chains strategies regarding to each customer and yield a generalized Nash equilibrium problem. Since price cutting and increasing service level are main re...
Contracts and Information Structure in a Supply Chain with Operations and Marketing Interaction
International Game Theory Review, 2016
The objective of the paper is to study how wholesale price and revenue sharing contracts affect operations and marketing decisions in a supply chain under different dynamic informational structures. We suggest a differential game model of a supply chain consisting of a manufacturer and a single retailer that agree on the contract parameters at the outset of the game. The model includes key operational and marketing activities related to a single product in the supply chain. The manufacturer sets a production rate and the rate of advertising efforts while the retailer chooses a purchase rate and the consumer price. The state of the game is summarized in the firms’ backlogs and the manufacturer’s advertising goodwill. Depending on whether the supply chain members have and share state information, they may either make decisions contingent on the current state of the game (feedback Nash strategy), or precommit to a plan of action during the whole game (open-loop Nash strategy). Given a ...
Contracting with asymmetric demand information in supply chains
European Journal of Operational Research, 2012
When a retailer holds no private information, a powerful supplier can use several contract types to extract for herself the first-best channel profit, leaving the retailer nothing but his reservation profit. In the case where the retailer holds private information on the probability distribution of market demand, most well analyzed contracts do not allow the supplier to achieve for herself the first-best channel profit. In equilibrium, the retailer is able to extract an information rent above his reservation profit, and the overall channel may deviate from its first-best solution. Such a result seems to conform with the general notion that when two parties deal with each other, the less informed party cannot avoid paying an information rent to the informed party. This paper shows that using judicially designed wholesale price contracts involving a buyback policy, a supplier can theoretically avoid paying any information rent to the privately informed retailer, and, at the same time, can extract all the first-best channel profit.
The effect of information asymmetry on ordering and capacity decisions in supply chains
European Journal of Operational Research, 2021
We revisit the problem of contracting under asymmetric information in a supply chain and highlight a few important properties that have not been reported previously. In our setting, a newsvendor retailer is endowed with superior information about the demand; the retailer may signal this information to the supplier by committing to purchasing a certain quantity in advance. Previous research has focused on characterizing the minimum quantity that convinces the supplier that demand is high. In this work, we claim that in some cases, the retailer prefers to order an even greater quantity than this minimum separating quantity, since committing to an advance purchase can result in incentives for the retailer to finance the entire capacity in the market-a choice that the retailer may not adopt absent information asymmetry. Such an outcome carries important implications regarding the efficiency of the supply chain and consumer welfare. In particular, our analysis shows that asymmetric information can result in a higher capacity in the market than the complete-information case; thus, asymmetric information can mitigate the double-marginalization problem and result in higher consumer welfare. We further conduct a comparison between the incentives of the retailer to signal the demand state to the supplier (resulting in a separating equilibrium) and the incentives of the retailer to withhold her private information from the supplier (resulting in a pooling equilibrium).
GAME THEORY IN SUPPLY CHAIN ANALYSIS
Game theory has become an essential tool in the analysis of supply chains with multiple agents, often with conflicting objectives. This chapter surveys the applications of game theory to supply chain analysis and outlines game-theoretic concepts that have potential for future application. We discuss both non-cooperative and cooperative game theory in static and dynamic settings. Careful attention is given to techniques for demonstrating the existence and uniqueness of equilibrium in non-cooperative games. A newsvendor game is employed throughout to demonstrate the application of various tools. 1
Games in two-stage supply chains: A critical review of existing models and their possible extensions
2012
The process of price and/or quantity selection in a supply chain consisting of independent agents provides a straightforward application of game-theoretical models, a fact that had long been neglected in the literature. Even though the first economic analyses of economic structures in supply chains emerged already in the 1950s (most notably Spengler, 1950), and many other studies followed in the next three decades, most of the economic literature before the 1990s fails to fit the analyses in a game-theoretical framework, which renders the comparison of the individual models rather difficult. A game-theoretical comparison of some of the existing models has recently been carried out independently by Lau and Lau (2005) and Kogan and Tapiero (2007). Our paper tries to compare the models reviewed in both of these sources, together with some alternatives that either have been neglected in both of these studies or have appeared in literature since. We conclude with proposing possible extensions to the existing models.