Investment decision-making and coordination of a three-stage supply chain considering Data Company in the Big Data era

In the Big Data era, Data Company as the Big Data information (BDI) supplier should be included in a supply chain. To research the investment decision-making problems of BDI and its effects on supply chain coordination, a three-stage supply chain with one manufacturer, one retailer, and one Data Company was chosen. Meanwhile, considering the manufacturer contained the internal BDI and the external BDI, four benefit models about BDI investment were proposed and analyzed in decentralized and centralized supply chains. Meanwhile, a revenue sharing contract was used to coordinate the decentralized supply chain after investing in BDI. Findings: (1) the Big Data investment threshold of the Data Company was determined by the cost improvement coefficient, meanwhile, Data Company’s benefit was influenced by the consumer preference information conversion coefficient. (2) Whether the manufacturer was suitable to invest in BDI, it was influenced by the cost improvement coefficient. (3) When revenue sharing coefficient could meet a certain range, the revenue sharing contract could make the supply chain coordinate. Moreover, the benefits of supply chain members were same after coordination.