Bargaining Power in Supply Chain Collaboration

讨价还价是供应链合作的重要组成部分。在Stackelberg博弈框架内的理论研究提供了均衡解，但是，它在考虑讨价还价过程中的人类互动方面失败了。另一种谈判框架的研究则认为合作是基于议价能力的，但无法定量地确定谈判者的实际权力地位。权力构成包括潜在权力、感知权力和实现权力。行为经济学认为，人类管理者不可能在这三个组成部分之间拥有一致的权力地位。为了使该理论在真实的世界中更具有实用性，本文采用行为研究方法，对供应链合作情景中的实际权力状况进行了研究。Stackelberg博弈框架预测，供应商，而不是零售商，总是提取所有的利润，而谈判框架表明，玩家谁投资的需求促进努力有能力获得更多的利润。通过实验室实验，我们期望找到供应商和零售商的经验权力地位。基于权力的地位，我们建议一个更好的合同协议与需求促进合作，在渠道效率和自身利益。第二种情况是同业竞争合同。Stackelberg博弈框架和谈判框架对谈判结果的预测仍然存在差异。通过实验室实验，我们可以发现哪种框架可以更好地解释人类决策数据。我们还将进一步分析谈判者的权力地位，以深入了解竞争情景中的议价能力。第一个和第二个场景是协作实践中最典型的两个组成部分。在一个场景中包含多个组件的情况更为常见。因此，第三个场景结合了第一个和第二个场景，以调查在合同中的议价能力与需求促进和同行竞争。对于所有三个选定的方案，我们将建立理论公式作为决策基准，并进行实验室实验，以收集真实的决策数据。通过对实验数据的分析，我们可以观察谈判者的实际权力状态，总结影响实际权力状态的因素，并建立行为模型，生成可靠的决策预测。

Bargaining is an essential part for collaboration in supply chain. Theoretical research within the framework of the Stackelberg game has provided equilibrium solutions, however, it has failed in terms of considering human interactions during bargaining. The other stream of research within the negotiation framework proposes that collaboration is based on bargaining power, however, it cannot quantitatively identify negotiators' actual power status. The power components include potential power, perceived power and realized power. Behavioral economics suggest that human managers cannot possess a consistent power status between the three components. To make the theory more practical in the real world, we want to investigate the actual power status in selected supply chain collaboration scenarios with behavioral research methods.The first selected scenario is contracts with demand promotion. The Stackelberg game framework predicts that a supplier, not a retailer, always extracts all the profit, while the negotiation framework suggests that the player who invests in the demand promotion effort has the power to gain more profit. By conducting laboratory experiments, we expect to find the empirical power status of the supplier and retailer. Based on the power status, we suggest a better contract protocol for collaboration with demand promotion, in terms of both channel efficiency and self-interest. The second scenario is contracts with peer competition. The Stackelberg game framework and the negotiation framework still have different predictions in the bargaining output. With laboratory experiments, we can discover which framework can explain human decision data better. We will also go further and analyze the power status of negotiators in order to gain a solid understanding of bargaining power in competition scenarios. The first and second scenarios are two of the most typical components in collaboration practice. It is more common to have multiple components within one scenario. Accordingly, the third scenario combines the first and second scenarios to investigate the bargaining power in contracts with both demand promotion and peer competition. For all three selected scenarios, we will establish theoretical formulations as decision benchmarks and conduct laboratory experiments to collect real decision data. By analyzing the experimental data, we can observe negotiators' actual power status, summarize the factors that influence the actual power status, and establish behavioral models to generate reliable decision predictions.