关键词: 合同制造商入侵, 消费者偏好, 信息不对称, 信号博弈

Abstract: In the past decades, many Contract Manufacturers (CMs) manufactured products for Original Equipment Manufacturers (OEMs). Since CMs have mastered the knowledge and technology of OEMs in the production process, they have the ability to develop products by themselves. Therefore, many CMs encroach the market by establishing their own brands, which are called private brands. Most of the previous studies have assumed the quality of encroached products to be lower than that of OEM’s products. However, in reality, there are quite a few CMs that encroach the market with high quality products. In addition, since manufacturer encroachment is affected by supply chain information structure, some researches have studied the encroachment problem under the combination of information asymmetry and quality factors. They can be roughly divided into two aspects: one is the information asymmetry between consumers and enterprises about product quality level; the other is the information asymmetry between enterprises about market demand. However, they do not consider the information asymmetry of consumers’ quality preference.
Based on the above background, this paper designs a two-level supply chain consisting of a CM and an OEM, in which a CM not only provides the OEM services, but also may introduce high-quality private products to compete with an OEM. Simultaneously, because the OEM has a better understanding of consumers, this paper also constructs an information asymmetry model of consumer quality preference. That is, heterogeneous consumers have different quality preferences for the same product, in which the OEM can obtain the specific distribution of consumer quality preference and know whether consumers prefer high quality or low quality overall. The CM only knows the probability of high or low distribution of consumer quality preference. In addition, since the CM can infer the true preference information by observing the OEM pricing, there is a signal game between the two sides. Based on this, we analyze the influences of different information structures and the CM high-quality encroachment decisions on the pricing and profit of supply chain members.
In the following paper, four supply chain decision models of the CM encroachment or non-encroachment under two kinds of information structure are established by using the game theory, and the equilibrium pricing and optimal profit of each member are deduced by backward induction. After obtaining the equilibrium result, we first compare the profits of the CM and OEM in four cases to get the CM’s decision to encroach. At the same time, we also discuss the influence of information structure on profits of both sides. Then, in order to obtain the conditions of consumer market clearing, we compare the price of the OEM’s product with market clearing price. Subsequently, we explore the impact of the OEM product quality level on the CM profit under different costs of sales differences. Finally,in the extension model, we discuss the role of having an information advantage for the OEM.
Through the above analysis, our research shows that: (1)The CM’s encroachment is always beneficial to itself, but not to the OEM. (2)Information asymmetry always harms the CM’s interests, but only will harm the OEM’s profits when the CM encroaches and the difference between high and low preference markets is large. (3)If the preference of the real market is relatively high, and the CM without information has weak confidence in the market,the equilibrium pricing of the OEM’s products can satisfy the needs of all consumers. (4)If the CM does not encroach or encroach under information symmetry, improving the quality of the OEM’s products can improve both manufacturers’ profits. However, if the CM encroaches under asymmetric information, the impact of the OEM’s product quality on the CM revenue will be related to the cost of the CM’s products sold. We further discuss the role of consumer preference information, and find that in most cases the OEM benefits itself more without access to consumer information.

Key words: contract manufacturer encroachment, consumer preference, information asymmetry, signal game