Information sharing and production timing strategy in a platform-based supply chain

The e-commerce platform has been adopting the agency mode to sell the products of the national brand manufacturer (NBM) while introducing its own store brand and obtaining the consumer's preference information (CPI) to reinforce the competitiveness of the store-brand products. This paper investigates the platform's decisions on whether to share the CPI with the NBM and its impact on the production timing decisions of the platform and the NBM. The results show that the platform may benefit from CPI sharing which may also change the equilibrium production timing of the platform and the NBM from sequential decision to simultaneous decision. In addition, the equilibria of the joint decision between the CPI sharing and the production timing are obtained, which is related to the market acceptance uncertainties of the products and the competitiveness of the national brands.