{"status":"ok","message-type":"work","message-version":"1.0.0","message":{"indexed":{"date-parts":[[2025,8,2]],"date-time":"2025-08-02T17:27:12Z","timestamp":1754155632619,"version":"3.41.2"},"reference-count":47,"publisher":"Emerald","issue":"10","license":[{"start":{"date-parts":[[2022,4,19]],"date-time":"2022-04-19T00:00:00Z","timestamp":1650326400000},"content-version":"tdm","delay-in-days":0,"URL":"https:\/\/www.emerald.com\/insight\/site-policies"}],"content-domain":{"domain":[],"crossmark-restriction":false},"short-container-title":["K"],"published-print":{"date-parts":[[2023,11,1]]},"abstract":"<jats:sec><jats:title content-type=\"abstract-subheading\">Purpose<\/jats:title><jats:p>The purpose of this paper is to investigate the opaque inventory information disclosure strategy for an online retailer who sells two substitutable products to customers in two selling periods.<\/jats:p><\/jats:sec><jats:sec><jats:title content-type=\"abstract-subheading\">Design\/methodology\/approach<\/jats:title><jats:p>The authors develop a two-period model where an online retailer sells two substitute products with two inventory composition structures to maximize profits. The authors investigate the optimal inventory disclosure decision from both <jats:italic>ex post<\/jats:italic> and <jats:italic>ex ante<\/jats:italic> perspectives. Sensitivity analysis is performed to investigate the effects that discount rate, transaction cost and the probability of agreeable inventory situation have on the equilibrium disclosure outcome. The authors also consider risk-averse customers and horizontally differentiated products to highlight the robustness of our results.<\/jats:p><\/jats:sec><jats:sec><jats:title content-type=\"abstract-subheading\">Findings<\/jats:title><jats:p>The authors find that the online retailer will choose the opaque information disclosure when attempting to increase revenue and reduce the mismatch of supply and demand in both <jats:italic>ex post<\/jats:italic> and <jats:italic>ex ante<\/jats:italic> inventory information conditions. Comparing with <jats:italic>ex post<\/jats:italic> disclosure strategies, <jats:italic>ex ante<\/jats:italic> opaque disclosure is optimal in a larger price region, and the total revenues gap between opaque disclosure and complete disclosure gradually increase as discount rate, transaction cost or the probability of agreeable inventory situation decreases. Furthermore, strategic customers may tend to be risk neutral when faced with opaque inventory information in a two-period sales setting.<\/jats:p><\/jats:sec><jats:sec><jats:title content-type=\"abstract-subheading\">Originality\/value<\/jats:title><jats:p>This current paper is the first paper to study the online retailer's inventory information disclosure strategy in two selling periods. Moreover, this paper presents the conditions under which the online retailer should share complete or opaque inventory information with customers to maximize the online retailer's total revenues.<\/jats:p><\/jats:sec>","DOI":"10.1108\/k-12-2021-1318","type":"journal-article","created":{"date-parts":[[2022,4,19]],"date-time":"2022-04-19T14:30:16Z","timestamp":1650378616000},"page":"3878-3903","source":"Crossref","is-referenced-by-count":0,"title":["Disclosing opaque inventory information in a two-period sales setting: substitute products' selling 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