Abstract: Forming alliance is an important strategic choice for firms to tackle demand uncertainty and avoid excessive competition. However, due to the differences between firms, it is a problem worthy of attention in making such decisions when choosing the appropriate alliance partners, based on the market competition environment and the demand forecasting accuracy of potential partners. In a single layer supply chain composed of three price competition firms facing price-sensitive but uncertain demand, the firms can utilize forecasting techniques to obtain demand information for price decision. In order to cope with demand uncertainty and reduce market competition intensity, an alliance could emerge among the firms to share demand information with each other. The expected profits of each entity were calculated in different alliance structures with and without forecasting techniques. The numerical analysis demonstrates the impacts of competition intensity and forecasting accuracy on the expected profits of the three firms in different alliance structures, and distinguishes the influences of cooperation and information sharing on expected profits. The observations and conclusions obtained in this paper can provide decision support for related enterprises.

Key words: competitive firm alliance, demand forecasting, information sharing, Internet of things (IoT)

摘要： 构建联盟是企业应对市场需求不确定性和避免过度竞争的重要战略选择，由于企业间的差异性，如何根据市场竞争环境和需求预测精度选择合适的联盟伙伴，是企业决策过程中值得重视的问题。构建了一个包含3个竞争性企业的单层供应链，在不确定性需求下，企业间可以共享需求信号，从而降低需求不确定性和竞争强度。考虑到各企业预测精度的异质性和联盟结构的多样性，分别计算了有无需求预测技术时，不同联盟结构下各主体（企业或联盟）的期望收益。通过数值分析，展示了竞争强度和预测精度对不同联盟结构下各企业期望收益的影响，从而得到合作与信息共享对各主体期望收益的影响机制，同时得到一些结论和观察结果，可以为相关企业提供决策支持。

关键词: 竞争性企业联盟, 需求预测, 信息共享, 物联网