The impact of quality level differences based on tacit collusion on the supply chain

• 1、College of Management and Economics, Tianjin University, Tianjin 300072

Abstract：Regarding the problem of collusion, many literatures focus on the study of the differences of collusion under different supply chain channels, while ignoring the changing laws of basic elements in the supply chain structure. In this paper, the author conducts an in-depth study on the impact of product quality level differences on the supply chain in tacit collusion of one-to-one supply chain channel. Based on the condition that consumers have a quality consumption tendency, the analysis is carried out by a combination of Nash game and Stackelberg game. The results show that the collusion behavior will cause the quality levels of the two products to be close to each other, resulting them become substitutes or complementary products in the market. When the two manufacturers make quality decisions, they are more sensitive to the product quality level of the counterpart. Compared with high-quality manufacturers, low-quality manufacturers are more sensitive to changes in product quality under different collusion conditions. In addition, for different decision-making scenarios, the author draws a trend chart of supply chain profit changes with quality differences. Based on this, we can obtain the decision-making form of profit maximization under each supply chain structure and different quality levels. This paper is of great significance to the research of collusion behavior and decision-making in the supply chain field with different quality levels.

Keywords： Collusion Pricing Decision Equilibrium Sensitivity Analysis: Quality Level Difference