Suchergebnisse

AbstractThis article investigates the firms' optimal quality information disclosure strategies in a supply chain, wherein the supplier may encroach into the retail channel to sell products directly to end consumers. We consider two disclosure formats, namely, retailer disclosure (R‐C) and supplier disclosure (S‐C), and examine the optimal disclosure format from each firm's perspective. We show that either firm prefers to delegate the disclosure option to its partner when the supplier cannot encroach. However, the threat of supplier encroachment dramatically alters the firm's preference of disclosure. The supplier may prefer the S‐C format to the R‐C format when the entry cost is low and the disclosure cost is high to achieve a higher quality information transparency. Meanwhile, the retailer may prefer the R‐C format to the S‐C format when the entry cost is intermediate to deter the possible encroachment of the supplier. In this sense, the firms' preferences of disclosure format can be aligned due to the threat of supplier encroachment. The consumer surplus is always higher under the S‐C format while either disclosure format can lead to a higher social welfare. We also consider an alternative scenario under which the supplier encroaches after the product quality information is disclosed. An interesting observation appears that the supplier may encroach when the product quality is low but foregoes encroachment when the product quality gets higher.

AbstractMany regulations have been enacted to prevent the multinational firm's (MNF's) tax avoidance and cause the enforcement cost of incoming shifting. This paper investigates the impact of the enforcement cost on a firm's tax‐efficient supply chain allocation strategy, wherein the firm can either create a research and development (R&D) center that innovates the intangible assets or create a distributor that acts as a marketing hub, in a low tax region to explore tax arbitrage. We show that when the firm engages in market competition and the impact of the enforcement cost is low, it prefers to create a distributor in the low tax region to align the benefits of tax saving and internal coordination. While if the impact of the enforcement cost is high, the firm prefers R&D center in the low tax region that can effectively mitigate the enforcement cost and achieve tax saving. When the market competition becomes more intense, the firm becomes more likely to choose R&D center in the low tax region to alleviate market competition. In this scenario, the social welfare is always higher when the firm allocates distributor in the low tax region. When an external supplier exists, the firm is still more likely to choose R&D center in the low tax region to reduce the supplier's wholesale price. What's more, in the presence of external supplier, the social welfare can be higher under either allocation format.

ABSTRACTWe investigate a manufacturer's information acquisition and subsidization strategies in a supply chain featuring two competing retailers who sell substitutable products and have private demand information. The manufacturer can decide whether to acquire demand information at a cost and further decide whether to offer subsidies simultaneously to retailers to induce their sharing of private demand information. We demonstrate that subsidizing retailers is always in the manufacturer's interest, but direct information acquisition is profitable only if its cost is low. Information acquisition helps the manufacturer gain superior demand information and leverages the retailer's information advantage, thereby reducing the expenditure of subsidization. Compared with the simultaneous subsidy provision scheme, we further investigate the sequential and partial subsidy schemes and find that the simultaneous and sequential subsidy schemes result in an identical equilibrium outcome that dominates the equilibrium outcome in the partial subsidy scheme when three subsidy provision schemes are all feasible. Although the outcomes are the same, we show that the simultaneous subsidy scheme can be applied in a broader range than the sequential subsidy scheme can. Otherwise, if complete information sharing cannot be achieved, the partial subsidy scheme may be the optimal choice for the manufacturer.

AbstractThis paper investigates the impact of channel selection power on the firms' channel configuration strategies in a market with two upstream manufacturers providing complementary products and one downstream retailer who can resell the products. Each manufacturer can sell its product either directly by incurring a selling cost or indirectly via the retailer, in which the decision is further dependent on the relative channel selection powers between itself and the retailer. We investigate three scenarios depending on the possible power structures among the firms and show that the equilibrium channel configuration strategy hinges highly on the channel selection power, the direct selling cost and the degree of complementarity between the two products. The manufacturer may prefer direct selling when it is more powerful than the retailer and both the direct selling cost and the degree of complementarity are relatively low. However, when the degree of products' complementarity is sufficiently high, a manufacturer would not choose direct selling even though there is no direct selling cost. We also show that a stronger channel selection power does not necessarily benefit but may occasionally hurt a manufacturer's profitability. For the manufacturer who does not have channel selection power before, the enhanced channel selection power endows it with more selling options but also encourages the leading manufacturer (who already has the channel power) to design a more aggressive channel configuration strategy that only benefits itself but hurts the others.