Quality information disclosure and advertising strategy in a supply chain
研究了制造商在产品质量信息不对称下，如何选择制造商广告或合作广告，以及质量信息披露如何影响广告策略，发现合作广告在高质量且更有效时对各方有利。
Existing research on advertising structures in a supply chain has mainly been conducted with symmetric quality information and the interaction between quality information disclosure and advertising has not been clarified. To identify the optimal advertising structure and disclosure strategy for a manufacturer, we explore manufacturer advertising and cooperative advertising in the context of product quality information asymmetry. We examine the implications of the manufacturer’s product quality information disclosure on his advertising strategies and the impact of advertising on quality information disclosure decisions. When cooperative advertising is more effective than manufacturer advertising and the product quality is low, the manufacturer should adopt manufacturer advertising, which leads to higher perceived quality and improves the retailer’s economic condition. We find that advertising can inspire the manufacturer to disclose more product quality information regardless of the advertising structure, which occurs when the effectiveness of advertising is large. Furthermore, the manufacturer, the retailer, and consumers can benefit from cooperative advertising when cooperative advertising is more effective than manufacturer advertising and the product quality is high. We also consider an extension where the manufacturer and retailer advertise simultaneously and find that advertising leads to more quality information being disclosed when the disclosure cost is low.