Supply chain contracts that deter information gathering

For the problem of deterring information gathering in supply chain under endogenous information structure, a non-linear program model is constructed. The results show that there exists a threshold value of information gathering cost as a reference for offering the contract. Then the supply chain contracts that deter information gathering are proposed under different information gathering costs, and the decisions and profits of the supplier and retailer are analyzed. Furthermore, it is verified that the supplier prefers to deter information gathering when the information gathering cost is lager than the threshold value. In this case, the supplier gets more profit whereas the retailer receives his reserved profit. Finally, a numerical example is presented to verify the main results.