Impact of Game Type on Supply Chain Performance

This paper analyzes the impacts of asymmetric-information game and stochastic- information game on supply chain performance. A two-stage supply chain consisting of a manufacturer and a retailer is considered and four types of games are compared: symmetric-deterministic game, symmetric-stochastic game, asymmetric-deterministic game and asymmetric-stochastic game. This paper shows that information uncertainty affects the supply chain by changing the retailer's equilibrium, whereas information asymmetry affects the supply chain by changing the manufacturer's equilibrium. And in the practical supply chain, information uncertainty is likely to undermine supply chain performance greater than information asymmetry. Numerical simulations show that an asymmetric-stochastic game is not equivalent to an asymmetric game plus a stochastic game. Under certain conditions, the impacts of information asymmetry and information uncertainly will interact, which will result in greater impact on supply chain performance.