Coordination of elderly healthcare service supply chain with information asymmetry: Designs of option contracts under different demand distribution statuses

This paper studies the issue of demand information asymmetry in an elderly healthcare service (EHS) system represented by a two-echelon elderly healthcare service supply chain (EHSSC) comprising an elderly service integrator (ESI) and a service provider (ESP). The goal of the ESI is to decide on how much service capacity is required for placing orders to the ESP, who directly serves the customers. Considering discrete and continuous demand distribution statuses, a centralised model with symmetric demand information and decentralised models with asymmetric demand information are developed to analyse the optimal ordering decisions and discuss the influence of information asymmetry. Furthermore, option contracts are applied to help coordinate the supply chain under asymmetric demand information based on different demand distribution statuses. Optimal option contract menus are designed for the ESP to promote the information sharing. Results show that the option contract can coordinate the EHSSC with asymmetric demand information under both discrete and continuous demand distribution statuses. The exercise price will be higher under lower demand information than that under higher demand information and the transfer payment will be less under lower demand information than that under higher demand information. Moreover, although the ESI has demand information superiority and can make use of opportunistic behaviour to maximise its own profit, the ESP as the leader can design the option contract to incentive the ESI to achieve true information sharing, and even obtain nearly all of the channel profit.