Effects of Switching Cost, Trust, and Information Sharing on Supply Chain Performance for B2B e-Commerce: A Multi-Agent Simulation Study

In e-commerce era, companies can build up supply chain relationship via Internet technologies. Facing the severe global competition, how companies sustain in volatile relations becomes an essential supply chain management issue. Among literatures in exploring the individual effects of trust, switching cost, and information sharing on supply chain performance, the interactive effects of these factors have not being investigated yet. This study, first, proposes a simulation model of switching cost, trust, information sharing and supply chain performance. The performance measures include average fulfillment rate, average stock cost, and average cycle time. Second, we conduct experiments on a multi-agent simulation platform to evaluate the supply chain performance affected by these factors under various order demand environments. Finally, results from experiments are analyzed to measure the effects of switching cost, trust, and information sharing on supply chain. Findings from this study can help managers better utilize switching cost and trust attributes to determine information sharing level in managing supply chain for B2B e-commerce.