双渠道条件下基于CSR的产品质量信号传递博弈模型

Signaling product quality via corporate social responsibility in dual-channel supply chains

从信息拥有主体和信息共享方式的视角,考虑一条由1家制造商、1家传统零售商、1家电子零售商和消费者构成的供应链,上游制造商拥有产品质量这一私人信息,并利用企业社会责任(CSR)向供应链下游纵向传递该私人信息.建立了在双渠道背景下,基于CSR这一间接信息传递方式的上游质量信号传递博弈模型,完整地刻画了该模型的混同均衡和分离均衡,并利用“直观标准”选出了唯一的分离,以考察CSR在传统渠道与电子渠道共存的竞争性市场环境下传递制造商质量信息中的角色.均衡结果表明,在一定的技术条件下,适中的CSR水平能够(在分离均衡意义下)准确传递制造商质量信息;最低的临界CSR水平所对应的均衡是唯一满足“直观标准”的分离均衡;在满足“直观标准”的分离均衡下,一些外生因素对高质量制造商的均衡利润的影响依赖于下游渠道之间的市场竞争效应和上游通过CSR实现质量信息揭示的信息成本效应.这些结果揭示了上游企业在下游双渠道竞争性环境下利用CSR行为传递其质量信息的动机.

The paper considers a supply chain consisting of an upstream manufacturer,a traditional retailer,an e-retailer and final consumers from the perspective of an information owner and the way of information sharing.In this supply chain,the manufacturer owns private information on the product quality and tries to signal it via its CSR strategy.In order to examine the role of CSR in signaling the quality level in dual channels,a signaling model is built to capture how the manufacturer indirectly shares the quality information by its CSR strategy in the presence of channel competition.The model characterizes completely the pooling and the separating equilibriums,and selects a unique equilibrium with the intuitive criterion.The equilibrium results show that under some technical conditions,a moderate CSR level signals a high quality level in the sense of a sepa rating equilibrium,and the equilibrium with the lowest threshold of CSR level is the only equilibrium satisfying the intuitive criterion.In the separating equilibrium that satisfies the intuitive criterion,the impacts of some exogenous factors on the upstream high-quality manufacturer depend on both the market-competition effect of the two downstream retailers and the information-cost effect of the upstream quality information revelation via CSR.These results reveal the upstream firm's quality-information conveying motivation via CSR strategy in a supply chain with downstream duel-channel competition.