As the external development environment becomes increasingly severe and complex, China faces intertwined challenges in accelerating its transformation. Establishing a new development paradigm is a strategic decision aimed at reshaping a country’s strengths in international cooperation and competition, with the security and stability of industrial and supply chains forming its foundation. However, the long-standing information asymmetry between supply chain enterprises significantly hinders collaboration. Thus, there is considerable academic and regulatory focus on incentivizing public companies to reduce this disparity by enhancing the quality of information disclosure, thereby strengthening supply chain resilience. Information disclosure is a crucial link for communication between public companies and stakeholders, holding economic significance in mitigating information asymmetry and enhancing the efficiency of resource allocation. Enhancing the quality of information disclosure can alleviate the bullwhip effect upstream, increase supply structure flexibility in response to demand changes, and help release high-quality signals regarding corporate value. Consequently, this attracts more customer resources and fosters stable cooperative relationships. However, businesses are not isolated entities, and their decision-making is inevitably influenced by other enterprises in the same industry. However, few studies have explored the spillover effects that improve the quality of information disclosure among industry peers. Leading companies, as strong performers and competitors within their industries, typically have higher performance levels and significant behavioural influences that impact their peers and national economic development. Subsequently, industry-leading companies, due to their behavioural influence, can serve as role models, driving overall improvements in the quality of other enterprises within the industry. However, because these leading firms possess stronger core competitiveness, their improvements might also lead to competition for resources, affecting other businesses. As ‘industry leaders’, these leading companies’ status relating to information disclosure attracts widespread attention from industry peers, upstream and downstream enterprises, and investors. This study investigates whether improving information disclosure quality in leading companies drives similar improvements among industry peers, fostering more stable customer relations and positive spillover effects. Alternatively, it explores if this improvement attracts more customer resources to leading companies, undermining the stability of customer relationships among other industry enterprises and yielding negative spillover effects. Answering this question not only reaffirms the significance of public companies in improving information disclosure but also provides micro-level evidence for the implementation of strategies to stabilise supply chains in China. Based on empirical data regarding information disclosure quality rankings from 2012 to 2022 for companies listed on the Shenzhen and Shanghai stock exchanges, the study draws several conclusions. First, enhancing the quality of information disclosure by leading companies within an industry significantly improves the stability of customer relationships in other enterprises, creating a strong demonstration effect. Robustness checks using alternative variables, different regression models, macro-level controls, instrumental variable approaches, the Heckman two-step correction, and placebo tests yielded results consistent with the main tests. Mechanism analysis shows that improvements in information disclosure by leading firms effectively guide other companies within the industry to enhance their information disclosure by increasing voluntary disclosures and improving corporate social responsibility, thereby enhancing customer relationship stability. Heterogeneity analysis indicates that companies with stronger ‘soft power’ are more likely to emulate ‘industry leaders’, thus amplifying the demonstration effects of leading companies’ improvements. Moreover, the more intense the industry competition and the more transparent the regional information environment, the more these factors reinforce the exemplary role of leading companies.