How Does the General Output Quantity Distribution of Suppliers Affect the Value-appropriation of Supply Chain？

This paper studies the problem of value-appropriation of supply chain, which is composed of a monopoly manufacturer downstream and multiple suppliers upstream. Firstly, we introduce two special examples in which output distribution of suppliers satisfy equal or equal-difference sequence. It is found that the more difference the distribution will be, the less preference will be gain by the manufacturer in the value-appropriation of supply chain. For the general distribution, the parameter ＂competitive residual＂ is introduced to score the influence of the suppliers＇ output quantity distribution on manufacturer＇s preference. The general conclusion will be given and it can directly deduce the conclusions above. Finally, we extend our basic conclusion to the more general situation in which the numbers of suppliers are not equal.