Title: Is information sharing profitable in e-business age?

Authors: Ruiliang Yan; John Wang; Bin Zhou; Peijun Guo

Addresses: School of Business and Economics, Indiana University Northwest, Gary, IN 46408, USA. ' Department of Information and Operations Management, Montclair State University, Montclair, NJ 07043, USA. ' Department of Management, College of Business and Public Administration, Kean University, Union, NJ 07083, USA. ' Faculty of Business Administration, Yokohama National University, 79-4Tokiwadai, Hodogaya-ku, Yokohama, 240-8501, Japan

Abstract: Is information sharing profitable for the competitive channel retailers? In order to answer this question, we use a game-theoretic model with Bayesian forecasting to investigate the benefits of cooperative information sharing for the online and traditional retailers. We assume that online and traditional retailers have their own private forecasting information about the market demand (asymmetric information). Our results show that when the online and traditional retailers share their private forecasting information, both retailers will be better off if they have a close forecast. Furthermore, if retailer individual information is less accurate and channel competition is more intense, information sharing becomes much more necessary to each retailer. Based on our results, optimal marketing strategies are derived and important managerial implications are provided.

Keywords: information sharing; distribution channels; game theory; marketing research; e-business; electronic business; profitability; competitive channel retailers; traditional retailers; online retailers; marketing strategies.

DOI: 10.1504/IJADS.2012.044943

International Journal of Applied Decision Sciences, 2012 Vol.5 No.1, pp.1 - 10

Published online: 09 Aug 2014 *

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