Demand Information Sharing in the Presence of B2B Spot Market

Companies have started to use a business-to-business (B2B) spot market in combination with their traditional long-term procurement contracts to procure intermediate goods. This study investigates whether or not the market players should share their demand forecast information with one another in a supplier — manufacturer supply chain and assess the benefits of sharing information in the presence of the B2B spot market. First, the supplier and manufacturer make forecast on the demand, and during this period they select an information-sharing arrangement, that is, whether to share information or not. Then, the supplier sets the wholesale price and the manufacturer submits an order after observing the wholesale price. Both the supplier and manufacturer can trade their intermediate goods in a B2B spot market. We find that the manufacturer can infer the supplier’s demand forecast from the wholesale price in the non-information-sharing case, but the supplier cannot enjoy such an advantage. We also find that information sharing benefits both the supplier and the manufacturer, if and only if demand and spot price are positively correlated and the supplier’s expectation of the manufacturer’s forecast is medium. By contrast, obtaining more demand forecast information can hurt supply chain players. Information sharing benefits the manufacturer but hurts the supplier when the supplier’s expectation of the manufacturer’s forecast is high. However, when the supplier’s expectation of the manufacturer’s forecast is low, information sharing benefits the supplier but hurts the manufacturer.