This study investigates an e-commerce supply chain comprising a supplier and an online retailer, wherein the supplier determines the quality improvement of products and the online retailer decides whether or not to acquire information on consumer preference. Consumer preference is ex-ante unknown to both the supplier and online retailer but can be resolved by the online retailer’s information acquisition behavior. We consider two widely adopted information acquisition strategies, namely, the committed acquisition strategy and contingent acquisition strategy, which differ in whether the online retailer’s information acquisition decision is made prior to or after the supplier’s quality improvement decision. We find that, under either strategy, the online retailer acquires information only when the cost of information acquisition is relatively small. Moreover, compared with the contingent one, the committed acquisition scheme boosts the online retailer’s motivation to gain information. Additionally, by comparing firms’ equilibrium profits under these two acquisition strategies, we uncover that the supplier always prefers the committed acquisition scheme. However, the online retailer’s preference toward these two information acquisition strategies is not unidirectional, that is, the online retailer prefers either the committed or the contingent strategy. Specifically, the online retailer is indifferent between these two acquisition strategies when the acquisition cost is either sufficiently low or high; otherwise, when the cost of information acquisition is moderate, the online retailer will shift her strategy from the contingent strategy to the committed strategy as the acquisition cost increases.

本研究调查了一个由供应商和在线零售商组成的电子商务供应链，其中供应商决定产品的质量改进，而在线零售商决定是否获取有关消费者偏好的信息。消费者偏好对于供应商和在线零售商都是事前未知的，但可以通过在线零售商的信息获取行为来解决。我们考虑两种广泛采用的信息获取策略，即承诺获取策略和偶然获取策略，它们的区别在于在线零售商的信息获取决策是在供应商质量改进决策之前还是之后做出。我们发现，在任一策略下，在线零售商仅在信息获取成本相对较小时获取信息。此外，与偶然获取方案相比，承诺获取方案增强了在线零售商获取信息的动机。此外，通过比较这两种收购策略下公司的均衡利润，我们发现供应商总是更喜欢承诺的收购计划。然而，在线零售商对这两种信息获取策略的偏好不是单向的，即在线零售商更喜欢承诺或随机策略。具体而言，当获取成本足够低或足够高时，在线零售商对这两种获取策略无动于衷；否则，当信息获取成本适中时，