Quality Information Disclosure Strategy In Supply Chain

The product quality is a big concern when consumers make purchase decision.In the new retail era,firms focus on making efficient quality disclosure strategy to help consumers know about the quality information.Based on the related literature and three new scenarios in new retail era: supplier encroachment,platform selling and sellers competition,stylized models are built to study the firms’ disclosure strategies under four supply chain structures.The work can be elaborated as follows.First,this dissertation studies the quality information disclosure in a single channel supply chain wherein a supplier sells its products via a retailer.The dissertation proposes the optimal disclosure strategies under supplier disclosure format and retailer disclosure format.The results show that either the retailer or the supplier prefers its partner to take the quality disclosure responsibility to free ride on the costly quality disclosure behavior.Second,this dissertation investigates the quality disclosure strategy in the presence of supplier encroachment.Except selling products to consumers via a retailer,the supplier can encroach into the retail channel to sell the products directly to end consumers.Taking supplier encroachment into consideration,the dissertation proposes the supplier’s and retailer’s optimal disclosure strategies and the supplier’s optimal encroachment strategy under suppler/retailer disclosure format,respectively.It shows that the threat of supplier encroachment dramatically alters the firm’s preference over two disclosure formats.The supplier may prefer to take the disclosure responsibility when the entry cost is low and the disclosure cost is high to achieve a higher quality information transparency.Meanwhile,the retailer may prefer to take the disclosure responsibility when the entry cost is intermediate to deter the possible encroachment of the supplier.Third,this dissertation investigates the optimal quality information disclosure strategy in a platform supply chain,wherein the seller pays the platform a fixed listing fee for participating in online selling and a commission fee per unit sold.The dissertation proposes the seller’s optimal platform selling strategy,and the seller’s and the platform’s optimal disclosure strategies under seller/platform disclosure format,respectively.It shows that the commission rate and the information transparency level can be higher under either disclosure format.More importantly,each party may prefer to take disclosure responsibility by itself rather than delegate this task to its partner.By doing so,the seller can facilitate the platform to cut down its commission fee while the platform can charge a higher commission fee even though it has to bear the disclosure cost.Finally,this dissertation investigates the impact of sellers competition on the optimal disclosure strategies in platform supply chain,wherein two competing sellers sell the products to the consumers via an online platform.The sellers’ and the platform’s optimal quality disclosure strategies and their preferences over two disclosure formats are investigated in competitive environment.The results show that under seller disclosure format,the platform would cut down the commission rate to improve the sellers’ disclosure incentives while under platform disclosure format,the platform would charge the highest commission rate to compensate its costly disclosure.Both the commission rate and information transparency level are higher under platform disclosure format and each party prefers to take the quality disclosure responsibility by itself.