Abstract: Many small, and medium-sized enterprises (SME), especially those located in developing countries, face daunting financing challenges. The China Association of Small and Medium Enterprises reports that 81% of Chinese small and micro enterprises struggles with capital shortages. Traditionally, bank financing is considered a solution for many capital-constrained firms. However, according to the enterprise surveys of the World Bank Group, 79.2% of bank loans require collateral. It is difficult for SME to obtain financial resources because they lack collateral and history creditworthiness. To address the issue on creditworthiness, guarantee credit financing (GCF) is wildly used in practice as an alternative to bank financing. For example, China Minsheng Bank and DRC Bank (a regional bank in China) provide guarantee credit in cooperation with focal companies. Haier Group provides financial support through its financial holdings company for its dealers to sell Haier's products. With guarantee credit, the retailer easily obtains bank loans to support its operations. At the same time, the supplier can increase its revenue, and the bank faces less financial risk.
Guarantee credit financing refers to bank loans provided to a capital-constrained firm (retailer) for specific procurement based on a guarantee provided by a focal company (manufacturer) in the supply chain. In theory, GCF is relatively novel to supply chain finance, but has obtained increasing attention for the past years. Scholars focus on the impact and role of GCF from the perspective of retailer's and manufacturer's credits and study how the manufacturer (retailer) can optimally structure the terms of the guarantee credit arrangement. Retailers with point-of-sale data are better positioned than suppliers to forecast future market demand. In practice, Haier Group provides GCF to some capital-constrained SME, especially for its retailers. Most of the capital-constrained retailers use point-of-sale systems to record historical sales data. By documenting and accumulating a large amount of sale data, they have more information advantage over the local demand than Haier Group. Retailers' access to demand information may allow them to obtain a favorable guarantee credit amount from the supplier.BABICH et al. (2012) point out that the supplier cannot use a simple contract to earn the maximum first-best channel profit when asymmetric information exists. Thus, it is interesting to investigate the impact of asymmetric demand information on supplier's decisions and profit under GCF.
This research aims to address the following research questions: (1)How do retailers and suppliers make financial and operational decisions under GCF? Can retailers always obtain their desired credit guarantee, and under what circumstances? (2)How does asymmetric demand information affect the decisions and profits of both retailers and suppliers? Does the retailer's information advantage solely benefit themselves or does it harm the supplier? Under symmetric demand information, the supplier's production cost impacts the guarantee credit amount, which increases with a broader demand distribution. Retailers inflate reported demand to secure a full guarantee, knowing that reporting the exact demand information leads to a partial guarantee. In the presence of asymmetric demand information, we find that when the supplier's production cost is below a certain threshold, the asymmetric demand information will have no effect on the retailer's and supplier's decisions. The retailer and the supplier earn the same profits under both asymmetric demand information and symmetric demand information. When the supplier's production cost is higher than a certain threshold and lower than another threshold, and the prior probability is below a certain threshold, the retailer can be identified by the supplier with an acceptable constraint. The retailer's demand information advantage enables him to receive extra profits and harm the supplier's profit. Otherwise, the supplier provides the same guarantee credit amount to any type of retailer. In such situations, asymmetric demand information is detrimental to both the retailer and the supplier.
This paper represents an initial exploration of GCF under asymmetric demand information, shedding light on how retailers and suppliers determine guarantee credit amounts and the impact of information asymmetry on their profits. Future research should delve deeper into the complexities of GCF and consider other relevant factors to enhance understanding and provide valuable insights for supply chain management.

Key words: supply chain management, guarantee credit financing, signaling game, dominant equilibrium

摘要： 研究信息不对称对担保信用融资模式下零售商和制造商策略性决策的影响。其中,零售商资金受限且具有精确的需求信息,而制造商只了解需求的分布。通过构建信号博弈模型刻画信息非对称,识别出零售商和制造商的策略性决策。结果显示,需求信息不对称既可能有利于零售商也可能不利于零售商,但总是不利于制造商。当生产成本和高类型零售商概率比较小时,分离均衡为占优均衡;当生产成本和高类型零售商概率比较大时,混合均衡为占优均衡。

关键词: 供应链管理, 担保信用融资, 信号博弈, 占优均衡