Capacity Reservation Strategies under Quantity Competition with Demand Uncertainty

In this paper, we consider a supplier serving two competing manufacturers who produce and sell their products in the same market faced with the uncertain demand. The manufacturers can either participate in the supplier development programme by reserving their capacities from the supplier before the demand is realized, which is referred to as the advance reservation, or do not by reserving their capacities after the demand is realized, which is referred to as the regular reservation. Given the unit capacity wholesale prices for both the advance reservation and the regular reservation, we study the manufacturers' capacity reservation and selling, and the supplier's capacity building decisions in equilibrium when the advance reservation strategy is adopted by neither, one, or both of manufacturers. We further investigate the equilibrium reservation strategies of manufacturers. We discover that completely symmetric manufacturers may choose different capacity reservation strategies, in which case, a unique mixed strategy equilibrium also arises. We also identify the conditions under which the capacity reservation preferences of all supply chain members can be aligned, thus achieving the efficiency of the supply chain. Our findings underscore the importance of operational characteristics in determiningthe capacity reservation strategies