This paper investigates a dominant brick-and-mortar retailer’s incentive to share demand forecast information with a supplier who has the encroachment capacity of online selling and makes quality decisions. If the retailer does not share the demand forecast, the supplier can infer the forecast from the retailer’s retail margin decision, which leads to a signaling game. That is, the launch of the supplier’s online channel can result in costly signaling behavior for the retailer, where the retailer must increase the retail margin to signal the true demand forecast, which may hurt both chain members. Consequently, the supplier chooses to encroach when the retailer shares information, while may choose not to encroach when the retailer does not share information in order to avoid costly signaling behavior by the retailer. Complementing the conventional understanding, the retailer may share information to encourage the supplier to encroach if the information accuracy of the demand forecast or the direct selling cost of the supplier is small or if both the information accuracy of the demand forecast and the direct selling cost of the supplier are large, while prefers to keep the information private to prevent the supplier’s intention to establish a direct channel otherwise. Furthermore, two extensions are made to verify the robustness of our key findings.

本文调查了一家占主导地位的实体零售商与具有在线销售侵占能力并做出质量决策的供应商共享需求预测信息的动机。如果零售商不分享需求预测，供应商可以从零售商的零售利润决策中推断出预测，从而导致信号博弈。也就是说，供应商在线渠道的推出可能会给零售商带来代价高昂的信号行为，零售商必须提高零售利润率才能发出真实的需求预测，这可能会伤害到连锁店的两个成员。因此，供应商在零售商共享信息时选择侵占，而在零售商不共享信息时可能选择不侵占，以避免零售商的昂贵信号行为。作为对传统理解的补充，如果需求预测的信息准确性或供应商的直销成本较小，或者需求预测的信息准确性和供应商的直销成本两者兼而有之，零售商可能会共享信息以鼓励供应商侵占。供应商很大，同时更愿意将信息保密，以防止供应商有意建立直接渠道。此外，还进行了两次扩展以验证我们的主要发现的稳健性。而更愿意将信息保密，以防止供应商有意建立直接渠道。此外，还进行了两次扩展以验证我们的主要发现的稳健性。而更愿意将信息保密，以防止供应商有意建立直接渠道。此外，还进行了两次扩展以验证我们的主要发现的稳健性。