风险规避对链合创新联盟的决策影响研究

The Effect of Risk Aversion on Optimal Strategies of Vertical Cooperative Innovation Alliance

在市场需求不确定的情况下,企业的风险规避态度通常会影响其决策行为。本文探讨了由风险规避型的供应商与制造商组成的链合创新联盟的质量与价格决策问题,分别对分散决策模式下和集中模式下供应商与制造商的最优决策进行了研究,并分析了双方的风险容忍度对双方决策行为的影响。最后通过数值仿真验证了有关结论的有效性,并进一步比较了两种模式下最终产品的质量提升度、价格以及供应商和制造商的总效用。结果表明,供应商和制造商的风险容忍度对中间产品价格、最终产品价格、质量提升度均有影响。在分散模式下,供应商和制造商的效用都与自身的风险容忍度呈正相关,与对方的风险容忍度呈负相关。在集中模式下,供应商和制造商能获得比分散模式下更大的总效用,且提供的产品价格更低、质量更高。

With intensified market competition and demand diversification, RD cooperation is becoming an important method to acquire competitive advantage. Most of the existing literature about RD cooperation assumes that players in the alliance are risk neutral in quality and price decisions, which ignores the impact of market demand uncertainty. However, market demand uncertainty brings risk to the firm and the firm＇s attitude towards risk will affect its decision-making behavior. Therefore, this study discusses quality investment and price decision of a vertical cooperative innovation alliance considering both the supplier and the manufacturer are risk-averse decision-makers. Moreover, we analyze the impact of risk tolerance on the optimal decision-making behavior and the players＇ utilities for different scenarios, including decentralized scenario and integrated scenario.Firstly, based on the mean-variance value function, we investigate quality investment and price decision via a Stackelberg game model. The supplier is a leader and determines the price of intermediate product, followed by the manufacturer who determines the price of final product and the level of quality improvement. Then, a vertical integration model is applied to studying quality investment and price decision of the risk-averse cooperative innovation alliance. Finally, a numerical study is used to illustrate the impact of the players＇ risk tolerance on the decision variables and the players＇ utilities. Furthermore, we compare final product price, quality improvement, and industry utilities in the above-mentioned two scenarios based on the numerical study. The results show that both the supplier＇s risk tolerance and the manufacturer＇s risk tolerance have significant impact on the price of intermediate product, the price of final product, and the level of quality improvement. When risk tolerance of the manufacturer is fixed in decentralized scenario, as the supplier＇s risk tolerance decreases, the supplier will reduce the price of intermediate product in order to attract more orders from the manufacturer to reduce income risk. Because of lower intermediate product price, the manufacturer can set up a lower final product price and a higher level of quality improvement to increase product sales and expect more revenue. When risk tolerance of the supplier is fixed in decentralized scenario, as the manufacturer＇s risk tolerance decreases, the manufacturer will choose lower final product price and lower level of quality improvement in order to avoid income risk. The reason is that demand is more sensitive to price than to quality. Meanwhile, the supplier will slightly raise the price of intermediate product in order to obtain more revenue while lower final product price can increase demand. In a decentralized scenario, the supplier＇s utility increases with its own risk tolerance and decreases with risk tolerance of the manufacturer. Similarly, the manufacturer＇s utility increases with its own risk tolerance and decreases with risk tolerance of the supplier. In integrated scenario, the final product＇s price and quality improvement increase with the total risk tolerance of the supplier and the manufacturer. Compared to the decentralized scenario, the risk-averse supplier and the risk-averse manufacturer can obtain more total utility and provide the final product in a lower price and a higher quality in an integrated scenario.