Abstract With the global development of the e-commerce economy, gray marketing has increased sharply and caused significant impacts on manufacturers. Radio frequency identification (RFID) technology provides a new approach for gray marketing management. In this paper, we introduce RFID to track the distribution of products within the gray marketing in a competitive environment. Using a game-theoretical model, we investigate the interplay between the manufacturers' RFID adoption decisions and the third-party's gray marketing decisions and examine the impacts of competitive intensity on firms' profits and decisions. We observe that RFID narrows the scope of the third-party's gray marketing and competitive intensity plays an important role in influencing the third-party's gray marketing decisions. The third-party's gray marketing decisions depend on the RFID double effects (cost effect and punishment effect), market disparity, and competitive intensity. Despite the benefits of RFID, the manufacturer does not always adopt it. When the market disparity is sufficiently small, the manufacturer will not adopt RFID. When the market disparity is sufficiently large, the manufacturer will only adopt RFID if the RFID punishment effect is strong. We also find that increased competitive intensity decreases the third-party's incentive to engage in gray marketing. Finally, although gray marketing decreases the branded manufacturer's profits, it may also increase the competitor manufacturer's profits. Therefore, public policymakers should take into account the positive impacts of gray marketing on competitor manufacturers when they formulate policies to inhibit gray marketing. Public policies should be developed to promote the entire social welfare.

中文翻译：

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采用与否：制造商在竞争环境中对灰色营销的 RFID 决策

摘要 随着电子商务经济在全球的发展，灰色营销急剧增加，对制造商造成了重大影响。射频识别（RFID）技术为灰色营销管理提供了一种新途径。在本文中，我们引入 RFID 来跟踪竞争环境中灰色营销中的产品分布。使用博弈论模型，我们调查了制造商采用 RFID 的决策与第三方灰色营销决策之间的相互作用，并检验了竞争强度对公司利润和决策的影响。我们观察到RFID缩小了第三方灰色营销的范围，竞争强度在影响第三方灰色营销决策中起着重要作用。第三方' 灰色营销决策取决于RFID双重效应（成本效应和惩罚效应）、市场差距和竞争强度。尽管 RFID 有很多好处，但制造商并不总是采用它。当市场差距足够小时，厂商不会采用RFID。当市场差距足够大时，只有RFID惩罚效应强，厂商才会采用RFID。我们还发现，竞争强度的增加降低了第三方从事灰色营销的动机。最后，灰色营销虽然降低了品牌厂商的利润，但也可能增加竞争对手厂商的利润。所以，公共政策制定者在制定禁止灰色营销的政策时，应考虑到灰色营销对竞争对手制造商的积极影响。应制定公共政策以促进整个社会福利。