Single supplier multiple cooperative retailers inventory model with quantity discount and permissible delay in payments

We consider in this paper an Economic Order Quantity (EOQ) problem involving a single supplier that offers quantity discounts and allows retailers to delay payments. The retailers are tempted to form coalitions in order to minimize their costs. We propose a solution approach that generates stable coalition structures for the retailers taking into account the delay in payments and the discount quantity offered by the supplier. The proposed approach includes a decision rule that generates preferred coalitions for each retailer. Our decision rule reduces considerably the number of explored coalition structures in order to determine solutions in the core.