The information leakage strategies of the supply chain under the block chain technology introduction

Abstract

Under the block chain technology introduction, a supply chain consisting of a retailer and two competing manufacturers is studied, in which the retailer realizes the vertical information sharing with one manufacturer (the large manufacturer) and always leaks the production information to another manufacturer (the small manufacturer). The small manufacturer has two strategies: passive acceptance strategy and active acceptance strategy. This paper establishes the decision models of supply chain members based on signal transmission theory, and discusses the influence of information leakage and information distortion on the decisions of supply chain members. The analysis shows that there are two equilibrium strategies for the large manufacturer: separation strategy and pooling strategy, and the strategy choice is related to the fluctuation of market demand and the small manufacturer's strategy choice. The retailer chooses information distortion strategy under high market demand, which reduces the profit of the small manufacturer and maximizes the profits of the retailer and the large manufacturer. In terms of the small manufacturer, an active acceptance strategy is more advantageous. In the end, the research conclusion is verified by numerical simulation, and it is found that the introduction of block chain technology has little influence on the manufacturers’ production decisions, and the large manufacturer' production increases in response to the increasing dependence of the small manufacturer's production decision on the large manufacturer's decision.