ZHOU Jianheng, SHANG Xiaofeng, JI Yajie
For a supply chain consisting of an upstream manufacturer and a downstream retailer $R_j $, the impact of the manufacturer's information advantage (making demand information disclosure) on the new entrant's brand strategy is analyzed by considering the threat of store brand introduction by the new entrant, retailer $R_i $, in the market under the condition of market demand uncertainty. Based on this, firstly, four combinations of strategies are constructed for whether manufacturers disclose information and whether the retailer $R_i $ introduces store brand, secondly, the effects of manufacturers' disclosure strategies on pricing and ordering decisions of each participant, the optimal disclosure strategies of manufacturers and the optimal store brand introduction strategies of retailers $R_i $ are analyzed, and finally, a fixed transfer payment incentive mechanism is designed to induce manufacturers to disclose or not. The study shows that the manufacturer's disclosure strategy changes retailer $R_i $'s introduction strategy to some extent when the fixed introduction cost lies in the middle value. Intuitively, $R_j $ does not want the manufacturer to disclose information, but when the channel substitution rate exceeds a certain threshold, its resistance to manufacturer disclosure will diminish. private label introduction by $R_i $ benefits the overall supply chain revenue under certain conditions, but always disadvantages the manufacturer. When retailer $R_i $ takes the lead in deciding whether to introduce store brand, both parties' gains will be better if the manufacturer accepts either $R_i $'s or $R_j $'s incentive contract.
