Abstract: With the advancement of information technology, online platforms can efficiently collect and analyze rich market data, such as customers’ browsing history and sales data, to obtain information about product demand. These data play a vital role in predicting consumers’ purchasing behavior and market demand. Online platforms can better establish a recommendation system to match products to each customer with advanced information technology and professional data analysis tools. Simultaneously, suppliers can take advantage of these data to make better operations decisions. However, suppliers must rely on platforms for demand information owing to the lack of detailed data and related analysis tools. In practice, an increasing number of consumers are concerned about product prices and product quality levels, and many consumers are willing to pay for high-quality products even if they are charged a higher price. Additionally, according to the time of obtaining product demand information, information sharing can be divided into ex-post and ex-ante information sharing. Specifically, ex-post information sharing means that the platforms share information with suppliers after obtaining real market demand information. Ex-ante information sharing means that the platforms and suppliers reach information sharing agreement in advance, and then share demand information after observing it. Inspired by the practice, considering quality decisions, is it necessary for online platforms that have massive market demand information to share the demand information with their partners? Under the reselling mode and agency mode, how do platforms make ex-post and ex-ante information sharing decisions?
   To address these issues, we develop a game-theoretic model consisting of an online platform and a supplier to investigate platform’s ex-post and ex-ante information sharing strategies under reselling mode and agency mode, respectively. Our main results suggest that: (i)The market demand uncertainty and the product quality cost coefficient are the key factors influencing the choice of ex-post information sharing by the platform. (ii)Under the reselling mode, when the quality cost coefficient is small, the platform will choose ex-ante information sharing; while under the agency mode, the platform is always willing to share demand information with supplier. (iii)In both reselling and agency mode, ex-ante information sharing is always good for the supplier. Specially, ex-ante information sharing can lead to a win-win outcome under the agency mode. However, ex-post information sharing may hurt the supplier. Moreover, the supplier with the ability to change product quality can encourage the platform to share information, which can not only better meet the needs of consumers, but also improve the profits of the platform and supplier. And then, the platform should formulate information sharing strategy according to different selling modes, product types, and the impact of different information sharing strategy on the supplier.
   Our model has several directions that merit discussion and future research. First, we implicitly assume that the online platform can perfectly forecast demand potential. In practice, the retailer might only obtain a vague signal about market demand. Thus, it would be interesting to study whether the platform should share information with the supplier at a specific accuracy level. Second, we focus on determining whether the platform would share truthful information with the supplier. Another possibility would be to investigate the impact of cheap talk on the platform’s information sharing and the retailer’s selling mode selection. Finally, we only build a supply chain consisting of one supplier and one online platform. In the future, we can build a supply chain containing multiple suppliers or multiple online platforms.

Key words: ex-post/ex-ante information sharing, reselling model, agency selling model, product quality, e-commerce supply chain

摘要： 随着信息技术和大数据的发展,拥有海量市场需求信息的平台企业是否会将信息分享给合作伙伴？对此,本文考虑市场需求同时受质量与价格影响,分别构建了批发模式和代理模式下的电商供应链博弈模型,分析了不同销售模式下平台的事前/事后信息共享策略。研究发现:(1)市场需求的不确定性和产品的质量成本系数是影响平台进行事后信息共享的关键因素。(2)批发模式下平台只有在质量成本系数较小时,才会与供应商进行事前信息共享;而代理模式下平台总是共享。(3)两种销售模式下平台选择事前信息共享都能提升供应商的利润,在代理模式下选择事前信息共享总能实现平台与供应商之间的“双赢”;而平台进行事后信息共享则可能损害供应商的利益。

关键词: 事后/事前信息共享, 批发模式, 代理模式, 产品质量, 电商供应链