Information disclosure strategies of live-streaming supply chains in the digi-economy era

Abstract

Live e-commerce is one of the important forms of digital transformation of supply chain, which has become increasingly popular in recent years as a powerful tool for internet advertising, interaction, and merchandising. We propose two pricing models to examine the strategies of information disclosure and pricing within the live-streaming supply chain. One model revolves around the agency framework, wherein the manufacturer determines the price while the streamer decides the level of information disclosure. The other model pertains to a self-implementing framework, wherein the manufacturer determines both the level of information disclosure and the price. To evaluate the robustness of our findings, we extend our models to encompass three significant scenarios: (i) the platform involvement model, where a live-streaming support platform becomes part of the supply chain; (ii) the fixed price model, which externalizes the manufacturer's pricing decision; and (iii) the dual-channel operations model. Our analysis reveals that the cost associated with information disclosure impacts the streamer's profits in a nonlinear manner within the agency model. Interestingly, expanding the revenue-sharing parameter does not invariably favor the manufacturer. Moreover, we observe that none of the live-streaming sales models exhibits a clear advantage over the others. Additionally, we demonstrate that the platform's involvement limits the manufacturer's ability to utilize the agency model for live-streaming sales. In situations with fixed pricing, the manufacturer is advised to disclose more production information during live-streaming sales.