Demand Forecast Sharing in Supply Chains

This paper examines the incentives of a manufacturer and a retailer to share their demand forecasts. The demand at the retailer is a linearly decreasing function of price. The manufacturer sets the wholesale price first, and the retailer sets the retail price after observing the wholesale price. Both players set their prices based on their forecasts of demand. In the make-to-order scenario, the manufacturer sets the production quantity after observing the actual demand; in the make-to-stock scenario, the manufacturer sets the production quantity before the demand is realized. In the make-to-order scenario, we show that sharing the forecast unconditionally by the retailer with the manufacturer benefits the manufacturer but hurts the retailer. We also demonstrate that a side payment contract cannot induce Pareto-optimal information sharing equilibrium, but a discount based wholesale price contract can. The social welfare as well as consumer surplus is higher under the discount contract, compared with under no information sharing. In the make-to-stock scenario, the manufacturer realizes additional benefits in the form of savings in inventory holding and shortage costs when forecasts are shared. If the savings from inventory holding and shortage costs because of information sharing are sufficiently high, then a side payment contract that induces Pareto-optimal information sharing is feasible in the make-to-stock scenario. We also provide additional managerial insights with the help of a computational study.