Timing of blockchain adoption under market acceptance uncertainty in a competitive shipping supply chain: Ex ante or ex post?

It is natural to expect that blockchain technology would drive the growth and digitization of the shipping industry due to its unique advantages, but TradeLens, the blockchain platform pioneered by Maersk, was unexpectedly shut down. Some viewpoints attribute this closure of TradeLens to the market acceptance uncertainty of blockchain technology dominated by a shipping company. We therefore investigate two competitive shipping companies’ blockchain adoption timing under market acceptance uncertainty. If one shipping company decides to adopt the ex post investment (PI) strategy, it can delay investment until the market acceptance uncertainty of blockchain technology is resolved. Otherwise, the ex ante investment (AI) strategy is adopted. By considering four blockchain adoption cases including the simultaneous ex ante adoption case, the sequential adoption cases, as well as the simultaneous ex post adoption case, we find that the information gap leads to differences in the (expected) optimal decisions of two shipping companies among these cases. We also find by the equilibrium profits that the shipping company postponing the blockchain investment could gain an additional information value. Moreover, as the investment efficiency drops, two shipping companies’ additional investment value within four cases reduces while the waiting value of one shipping company adopting PI strategy in the sequential adoption cases increases. We further obtain two shipping companies’ equilibrium strategies and optimal strategies, suggesting that the simultaneous ex ante investment strategy is always not the optimal strategy under any conditions while the simultaneous ex post investment strategy can be the Pareto optimal strategy for two shipping companies given certain market acceptance uncertainty conditions. Finally, our study provides several important management insights for practitioners and policy recommendations for policymakers regarding blockchain technology adoption in the shipping industry.