Information Sharing via Digital Freight Brokerage Platforms : Improving Operational Responsiveness to Carrier Freight Rejection

Nowadays, supply chain operations frequently encounter disruptions due to carrier freight rejection. Motivated by real-world practice, this paper studies the operational value of digital freight platforms' information sharing with firms in supply chains, an effort aimed at enhancing operations in response to freight carrier rejection. We develop a theoretical model in which a digital freight platform shares its superior predictive information on uncertain freight market conditions with a single supply chain, consisting of a retailer (i.e., the shipper working directly with the platform) and a manufacturer, allowing them to better anticipate carrier freight rejection. Our findings demonstrate the economic incentives behind a digital freight platform's information sharing by quantifying the benefits to the relevant players, and show that the platform prefers to share information fully with both the retailer and manufacturer in the supply chain over sharing exclusively with the retailer as the manufacturer's production diseconomy increases. We also consider a digital freight platform's information sharing to competing supply chains, and find that the platform's equilibrium information sharing formats transition gradually as the manufacturer's production diseconomy increases. Our results yield several insights into the management of digital freight platforms' information sharing. First, the probability of freight carrier rejection is a positive factor that drives the platform to improve the accuracy of its predictive information. Second, the platform experiences disruptive improvements in its information accuracy as competition increases. Finally, digital freight platforms' information sharing could have a negative spillover effect on other solutions aimed at alleviating carrier freight rejection