In practice, selling goods through a powerful retailer such as Wal-Mart enables the supplier to access the retailer’s ERP for accurate demand information (e.g., Wal-Mart’s Retail Link). However, in the recent years, we observe the suppliers are suffering from longer and longer average account period when they contract with powerful retailers. Therefore, whether partnering with a powerful retailer at the cost of a longer account period becomes the supplier’s strategic decision. In this paper, we formulate the supplier’s tradeoffs among the information advantage, payment disadvantage, and channel competition when it makes retailing decisions. We study the supplier’s two representative strategies: (1) relying on a small retailer that does not accumulate much information but can settle accounts immediately (referred to as Real-time Payment Retailing) or (2) relying on a powerful retailer that shares accurate demand information but incurs deferred payment (referred to as Deferred Payment Retailing). We built game-theoretical models and found that, interestingly, the supplier will prefer Deferred Payment Retailing when the supplier’s cash opportunity cost is high. We identify three interactive forces, namely, the pricing power effect, the demand size effect, and the information value, to interpret the rationality of the supplier’s preferences over Real-time and Deferred Payment Retailing strategies.

实际上，通过强大的零售商（如沃尔玛）销售商品，可使供应商访问零售商的ERP以获取准确的需求信息（例如，沃尔玛的Retail Link）。但是，近年来，我们发现供应商与强大的零售商签约时，他们的平均账期越来越长。因此，是否以较长的会计期间为代价与强大的零售商合作将成为供应商的战略决策。在本文中，我们在制定零售决策时在信息优势，支付劣势和渠道竞争之间制定了供应商的权衡。我们研究了供应商的两种代表性策略：（1）依靠一家不会收集太多信息但可以立即结帐的小型零售商（称为实时支付零售），或（2）依靠一家拥有准确需求信息但会产生延期付款的强大零售商（称为作为延期付款零售）。我们建立了博弈论模型，发现有趣的是，当供应商的现金机会成本很高时，供应商将首选延期付款零售。我们确定了三种交互作用力，即定价能力效应，需求规模效应和信息价值，以解释供应商偏好实时和递延支付零售策略的合理性。