Channel Strategy Selection in a Competitive Supply Chain with Information Asymmetry and Credit Financing

Nowadays, channel selection and pricing strategies have become important issues in supply chain management research. This study considers a supply chain consisting of one supplier, two competing retailers, and consumers under two contractual arrangements: wholesale and revenue sharing. Under both contractual arrangements, the supplier obtains credit from the retailers at a predetermined interest rate and later repays the debt. The demand functions take market uncertainty into account, where demand can occur in high or low states as a result of information asymmetry. In the wholesale strategy, a Stackelberg game is developed, with the supplier acting as the leader and the two retailers acting as followers who make decisions simultaneously. In contrast, under the revenue sharing strategy, a Nash game is employed, in which the retail prices are determined simultaneously. The proposed model is used to analyze the optimal pricing decisions, channel strategies, and profitability of the supply chain members. The results demonstrate that the choice of channel depends on several conditions, including the range of revenue sharing rate and the state of information asymmetry. This study provides useful insights into strategic decision making and establishes a foundation for future studies that incorporate stochastic modeling.

کلیدواژه ها:

Supply chain ، Channel selection ، Price competition ، Information asymmetry ، Game theory