EXPRESS: Information Sharing between Competitors with Endogenous Production Timing

Abstract

We study two competing firms’ incentives for demand information sharing and their production timing strategies. One firm adopts routine timing, where her production time is fixed according to her previous product models’ manufacturing time. The other firm uses strategic timing, where his production time can be strategically chosen to occur before, concurrently with, or after that of the routine-timing firm. The firms decide whether to disclose their private demand information and make quantity decisions based on the available demand information, either simultaneously or sequentially. We analyze the optimal production timing decisions for the strategic firm under different information sharing scenarios and find that a preemptive move is generally not optimal. We demonstrate that endogenous production timing can create incentives for information sharing and characterize the conditions under which both firms share information, one firm shares information, or neither firm shares information. Additionally, we uncover several interesting implications of information sharing under endogenous production timing: firms are more likely to share information in intensified competition, a firm may benefit from its rival’s superior information capability, and the option of information sharing enhances social welfare, which may also benefit from more intense competition.