Managing a 5G mobile phone supply chain under the impact of strategic consumers: A two-period game analysis and applications

Abstract

Consumers’ strategic purchasing behavior has a great influence on the pricing and sales of new products. In order to study the impact of strategic consumers on the sales of 5G mobile phones, we establish a two-period pricing model. The supply chain contains two manufacturers, a communications operator and a mobile phone retailer. Cases where two manufacturers have the same or different pricing rights are researched by using the Stackelberg game and the Nash game model. Our research results are as follows: (1) We obtain the optimal 5G communication fees in two periods and find out how they change with the proportion of consumers changing. (2) We figure out the profits of the supply chain in two periods and analyze them. We find that the communication operator earns more than the others most of the time. (3) We investigate how the proportion of strategic consumer impact on supply chain profits and conclude that the optimal price and demand in a period will decrease as the proportion of consumers who only purchase products in the other period increases