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.