Game theory in supply chain management: current trends and applications

As game theory continues to be a relevant approach in evaluating supply chain coordination and competition, this paper explores the various applications and current trends of game theory to supply chain management through an exhaustive review on the literature. This work reviews more than 200 papers which cover several supply chain formations, structures, environments, and decisions together with different game theoretic concepts and applications. First, the paper elaborates on the basic concepts of Nash and Stackelberg games to allow further understanding of their applications in supply chain analysis. The review is then presented and divided into three segments: 1) the development of game theory; 2) the use of Nash and Stackelberg solution concepts in analysing supply chain management; 3) the integration of game theory to different supply chain structures, decisions, and present conditions. Moreover, descriptive analytics are also provided to highlight the distribution of trending topics in the domain field. Finally, the paper provides a summary of the review and recommendation for future works in line with using game theory for supply chain analysis.