Pricing and effort decisions for a supply chain with uncertain information

This paper analyses the pricing and effort decisions of a supply chain with single manufacturer and single retailer. The manufacturer produces a kind of product and then wholesales the product to the retailer, who in turn retails it to customers over a single selling season. The retailer can influence demand through her sales effort. This research depicts the consumer demand, the manufacturing cost and the sales effort cost as uncertain variables. Considering the demand expansion effectiveness of sales effort, one centralised and three decentralised game models are built on the basis of the expected value criterion, and the equilibrium solutions are obtained. We investigate the effects of the parameters’ uncertainty degrees on the pricing and effort decisions. The results indicate that the manufacturer benefits from improvement in demand and cost uncertainties when he has at least bargaining power in the supply chain. The results also imply that the uncertainty degree of sales effort elasticity has an outstanding influence on the pricing and effort decisions, whereas the uncertainty degree of price elasticity has a modest impact on these decisions. We also study the effects of the parameters’ uncertainty degrees on the supply chain from the consumers’ perspective. The results suggest that with a power retailer, the retail price should always be on the high end. Consequently, consumers do not necessarily benefit from a power retailer. When the manufacturer and the retailer have equal bargaining power, consumers do not necessarily benefit from the supply chain, either.     

Coordinating a three-layer supply chain with uncertain demand and random yield

The paper considers a three-layer supply chain involving one raw-material supplier, one manufacturer and one retailer. The market demand is assumed to be stochastic and productions at the raw-material supplier and manufacturer are subject to random yield. The centralised model is studied as the benchmark case. The decentralised model is solved and Nash equilibrium solutions are obtained. It is shown that buyback contract fails to coordinate such a supply chain. However, a composite contract framed combining buyback, and sales rebate and penalty contracts is shown to coordinate the supply chain. Numerical examples are provided to illustrate the developed models.     

Pricing decisions for three-echelon supply chain with advertising and quality effort-dependent fuzzy demand

Simultaneous influence of market power structure, advertising and quality efforts on the optimal pricing decisions and performance of a multi-echelon supply chain under uncertainty have received scant attention in the literature. We focus on this gap by examining a serial decentralised three-echelon supply chain consisting of a supplier, a manufacturer and a retailer. The uncertainty associated with customer demand, marginal production costs and effort costs is expressed as linguistic or fuzzy variables. We analyse centralised supply chain to obtain all benchmark parameters. We investigate four decentralised supply chain cases through fuzzy game theoretic approach. We compare among three Stackelberg games with various supply chain leaderships and a vertical Nash. Our key findings are as follows. First, the manufacturer puts least quality effort while retailer puts least advertising effort when they act as Stackelberg leader in a three-echelon supply chain. Second, supplier's per unit price is governed by the channel leadership in three-echelon supply chain while retail prices are less affected by the leadership. We investigate the impact of fuzzy degree of quality and advertising sensitivity on optimal profit distribution among agents. We present numerical analysis to illustrate the importance of the derived theoretical results and discuss additional managerial insights.     

Simplicity is beauty: pricing coordination in two-product supply chains with simplest contracts under voluntary compliance

Pricing is an important topic in supply chains. In this paper, we explore the coordination challenge with the use of simplest contracts for the case with two products. To be specific, we consider a single-manufacturer single-retailer make-to-order supply chain. In the base model, we consider the case when the product demands are independent and derive the optimal pricing decisions under a decentralised setting. Comparing with the centralised setting, we show that double marginalisation in the decentralised setting reduces the supply chain efficiency by 25%. We then find that the simpler contracts such as the three-parameter two-part tariff (3P-TT) contract and the three-parameter revenue sharing (3P-RS) contract can coordinate the two-product supply chain. We extend the analysis in two cases: (i) the case when the products are substitutable and (ii) the case when the retailer is risk averse, and show that both the 3P-TT and 3P-RS contracts can coordinate the respective supply chain. We also find that the degrees of product substitution and retailer’s risk averse significantly influence the supply chain performance.     

Incentives for quality improvement efforts coordination in supply chains with partial cost allocation contract

In this paper, we consider quality improvement efforts coordination in a two-stage decentralised supply chain with a partial cost allocation contract. The supply chain consists of one supplier and one manufacturer, both of which produce defective products. Two kinds of failure cost occur within the supply chain: internal and external. The supplier and the manufacturer determine their individual quality levels to maximise their own profits. We propose a partial cost allocation contract, under which the external failure cost is allocated between the manufacturer and the supplier at different rates based on information derived from failure root cause analysis. If the quality levels of the supplier and the manufacturer are observable, we show that the partial cost allocation contract coordinates the supply chain, provided that the failure root cause analysis does not erroneously identify the manufacturer’s fault as the supplier’s, and the supplier does not take responsibility for the manufacture’s fault. In the single moral hazard model, where only the quality level of the supplier is unobservable, the optimal share rates require the supplier to take some responsibility for the manufacture’s fault. However, in the double moral hazard model, where quality levels of the supplier and the manufacturer are unobservable to each other, the optimal share rates require the supplier not to take responsibility for the manufacturer’s fault. It is noted that the root cause analysis conducted by the manufacturer may have its disadvantage in attributing the fault to the supplier when both sides are at fault. We also propose a contract based on the dual root cause analysis to reduce the supplier’s penalty cost. Numerical results illustrate that the partial cost allocation contract satisfies the fairness criterion compared with the traditional cost allocation contract.     

不同供应链合同的最优订货策略及适用性比较

针对由一个制造商和一个零售商组成的单一易逝品供应链,在随机库存问题报童模型基础上,推导了回购、收入分享和数量折扣合同下,零售商的最优订货策略、零售商和制造商的期望利润,给出了不同供应链合同的适用条件。通过一个皮衣生产、销售供应链的案例,对不同供应链合同下的最优订货策略、合同适用性及原因进行了分析、比较。为理解不同供应链合同的适用性提供了数理依据和案例解释。     

Pricing decisions in closed-loop supply chains with marketing effort and fairness concerns

We investigate closed-loop supply chains (CLSCs) under four reverse channel structures where a central planner, a manufacturer (M), a retailer (R) or a third party (T), respectively, serves as the collector of used product and demand depends on R’s marketing effort. We derive supply chain profitability under both the centralised and decentralised CLSCs and furnish the optimal marketing effort, collection rate and pricing decisions for the supply chain members. We then extend the base models along two directions: the first extension incorporates R’s distributional fairness concerns into the M collection model and the second extension considers potential recycle cost advantages by R and T compared to the M collection model.     

Contract design for cooperative product service system with information asymmetry

This paper studies how to effectively provide product service system (PSS) in the supply chain with asymmetric information for service-oriented manufacturing (SOM). With a PSS, the manufacturer chooses the product quality, and the retailer, who possesses private cost information, is responsible for adding necessary value-added service based on the basic product. The analytical underpinnings of our work are provided by the principal-agent paradigm. In the paper, we develop three types of contracts and conduct a detailed comparison among the three contract models. With these studies, we find that: (i) the wholesale price contract is dominated by the other two contracts, (ii) The retail price maintenance contract can always generate a higher profit for the manufacturer and a higher welfare for the consumers, whereas the franchise fee (FF) contract can always generate a higher profit for the retailer and (iii) The FF contract can always stimulate more service from the retailer. Our theoretical and numerical results show that there are significantly different effects when the three types of contracts are utilized in the supply chain for SOM with asymmetric information, and which of them is the most attractive will depend largely on the power structure of the supply chain and/or their cost information types.     

Optimisation of online retailer pricing and carrier capacity expansion during low-price promotions with coordination of a decentralised supply chain

In recent years, many online retailers in China set low prices on 11 November, which stimulates huge delivery demand and results in many problems although carriers make an effort to increase their delivery capacities temporarily. To circumvent this difficulty, we consider a supply chain consisting of an online retailer, who can set price to influence the demand, and a capacitated carrier, whose capacity can be expanded at a high cost. We derive the optimal decisions in the centralised and decentralised decision systems, and compare the performances of the two systems. We find that the optimal decisions, and which system has lower price, larger capacity increment, and more late delivered goods depends on the model parameters (the market scale, the late delivery costs, the capacity expansion cost, the delivery fee, and the demand uncertainty). Specially, we show that, contrary to the traditional channel, the online retailer in the decentralised system may set lower price and the carrier has less incentive to expand capacity in the decentralised system in some situations, which underlines the need for coordination. In addition, we propose coordination contracts to improve the overall performance of the supply chain under deterministic and random demands.     

What is the role of value-added service in a remanufacturing closed-loop supply chain?

While the previous literature overlooks value-added service in a closed-loop supply chain (CLSC), we consider new research problems with embedding value-added service into remanufacturing models. In this paper, we mainly study the role of value-added service in a CLSC and investigate how the value-added service influences profits and other decision variables. Then, we evaluate the performance of the CLSC in different service structures, where a manufacturer or a retailer provide the value-added service. Systematic comparisons and numerical studies show that the supply chain is more effective when service is provided by a manufacturer rather than by a retailer. Also, value-added service improves the whole supply chain performance and plays a regulatory role in a CLSC and influences the decisions of supply chain members. We also show that while a service cost-sharing mechanism can only optimise rather than achieve the supply chain coordination, and the degree of optimisation depends on cost-sharing percentage, the two-part tariff contract can be an effective mechanism to coordinate decentralised service scenarios by generating the same supply chain performance in a centralised service architecture model.     

质量影响需求下的二级供应链协调模型研究

针对产品的生产质量和销售质量同时影响顾客需求问题,建立了制造商处于领导地位的二级供应链决策模型,分析了在分散式决策和集中式决策下制造商和零售商关于产品质量的决策,设计了一个成本分摊和收入共享契约协调供应链。结果表明,该契约能将制造商和零售商紧密地联系在一起,共同分担风险,通过共同努力都能获得比分散式决策下更大的利润,体现了供应链协调的思想。     

Coordinating a supply chain under uncertain demand and random yield in presence of supply disruption

A two-echelon supply chain involving one manufacturer and one retailer for a single product is considered in this paper. The end customers’ demand is assumed to be random. The production of the manufacturer is subject to random yield, and there is a possibility of supply disruption in which case no item from her can reach the retailer. The retailer has a backup supplier who is costlier but perfectly reliable, and is having a limit up to which he may deliver. In addition to placing an order to the manufacturer, the retailer is allowed to reserve a quantity from the backup supplier in the ordering period; he may buy up to the reserved quantity after realising actual market demand in the trading period. Aiming at studying the effects of the various uncertainties involved in the chain on the optimal decisions, we develop and analyse centralised and decentralised models. We also propose a contract mechanism to coordinate the chain and find threshold conditions for which the coordinated model would collapse. Numerical examples are provided to illustrate the developed model.     

Coordination and performance analysis for a three-echelon supply chain with a revenue sharing contract

This paper focuses on a three-echelon supply chain composed of a manufacturer, a distributor and a retailer for a single selling period. Based on a revenue sharing contract, the coordination of the decentralised supply chain with the simultaneous move game or the leader–follower game is analysed. It is determined that the revenue sharing contract can coordinate the decentralised supply chain with the simultaneous move game. Our analysis reveals that the revenue sharing contract cannot coordinate the decentralised three-echelon supply chain with the leader–follower game except for a special situation. However, this result provides an opportunity to develop methodology and results that measure the potential improvement in supply chain performance that can be gained from utilising the revenue sharing contract. This is an important aspect of this paper.     

Supply chain coordination under trade credit and retailer effort

In this paper, we study the role of trade credit in coordinating a Capital Constrained Supply Chain in the presence of retailer Effort (CCSCE), essentially because of the impact of its related default risks on the relationship between the chain’s members. We consider a CCSCE consisting of a supplier and a retailer where the retailer may exert costly promotional efforts to increase the market demand but has limited capital and no access to bank financing due to low credit rating. Conversely, the supplier has adequate funds to offer trade credit to the retailer without borrowing from external channels. We then examine whether the existing coordination contracts can still coordinate the CCSCE under trade credit. Our result shows that these contracts can achieve coordination of the supply chain when the interest rate of trade credit is competitively priced. Nevertheless, this position cannot always be reached. That’s why we propose a generalised contract based on risk compensation to coordinate the CCSCE. Using our proposed coordinating contract, the supplier perfectly coordinates the retailer’s decisions for the largest joint profit, and arbitrarily allocates the maximised joint profit among supply chain members. Finally, the numerical study allows to verify this finding. From managerial insights, our results provide the supply chain managers with novel insights on how to combine trade credit with the existing coordination contracts in order to improve the profitability of the entire supply chain as well as the individual member.     

The value of trade credit with rebate contract in a capital-constrained supply chain

We investigate the value of an innovative trade credit with rebate contract (TCRC) model in a stylised supply chain. In this supply chain, the capital-abundant manufacturer offers an integrated contract involving trade credit, minimum ordering and sales rebate contract to a capital-constrained retailer. To highlight the value of the TCRC model, we compare it with a traditional trade credit financing (TTCF) model in a ‘selling to the newsvendor model’. First, we show that equilibrium strategies exist between the manufacturer and the retailer under the TCRC or TTCF model. Second, this study investigates equilibrium selection between the TCRC and TTCF models for the individual and the supply chain. Finally, we show the manufacturer’s pricing policy, wherein the TCRC model outperforms the TTCF model for the players. Furthermore, we conduct a set of numerical experiments to show evidence for theoretical analysis and measure the operation efficiency of the TCRC model for players in the supply chain.     

Option contracts for online celebrities as retailers in supply chains

The online celebrity economy, also called the internet celebrity economy, is growing rapidly in China. Celebrity retailers are usually demand sensitive and capital constrained. The capital constraints along with information asymmetry often render supply chains inefficient when manufacturers are producing at non-optimal levels. Few studies have shed light on the online celebrity supply chain, especially with respect to options. In this study, we examine how option contracts can coordinate supply chains. We find that a capital-constrained retailer can achieve more profitable orders when given an option. The manufacturer – without the full information of market demand – also benefits from offering an option to the retailer. Our numerical case shows that the options contract generates different payoffs depending on the capital of the retailer.     

Pull and push contracts in a decentralised assembly system with random component yields

This study investigates how random component yields can influence pricing and production decisions under pull and push contracts. We consider a decentralised assembly system where a manufacturer procures complementary components from two suppliers with random yields. We first characterise the centralised equilibrium decision as a benchmark and then analyse the equilibrium solutions in a decentralised assembly system under each contract. We find that neither contract is always superior to the other in terms of system profit. Under a push contract, suppliers always achieve the first mover advantage with higher payoff. However, the first mover advantage does not hold for the manufacturer under a pull contract. We further conduct sensitivity analysis to study the impact of random component yields and retail price on equilibrium solutions under each contract. Interestingly, the wholesale prices charged by suppliers always increase with supply yield uncertainty under a pull contract, but decrease under a push contract. In contrast with the centralised solution, the equilibrium quantities in the decentralised solution decrease with supply yield uncertainty under both pull and push contracts. We then extend our model to a general case with multiple suppliers. The system payoff decreases with the number of suppliers, and the main results derived in two suppliers setting still hold in the system with multiple suppliers.     

基于碳信息不对称的两级供应链谎报行为

为研究供应链上下游企业间面临碳信息不对称风险时的最优谎报决策,运用Stackelberg博弈理论探讨制造商为主导的二级供应链博弈行为。结合碳排放交易机制下的新型利润模型,采用逆向求解法求解供应链参与者最优决策,并定性分析制造商和零售商的谎报行为以及谎报行为对供应链绩效的影响。研究表明,碳信息谎报与成本信息不对称情形具有明显差异。制造商不论是否谎报碳信息均能最大化自身利润,而零售商将低报碳排量信息。相比零售商不谎报情形,谎报反而能提高制造商与零售商利润,但此时供应链总利润仍低于供应链最优利润。制造商可通过收益共享契约协调供应链,且最优收益共享系数与谎报情形下零售商利润正相关。     

基于顾客现状偏好的供应链无理由退货策略

首次将顾客现状偏好因素引入到供应链无理由退货策略中,主要研究了当制造商和零售商之间存在回扣契约或销售折扣契约时,供应链及其成员的最优无理由退货策略问题。文中通过对供应链无理由退货策略进行建模分析,分别得出了在不同契约中供应链整体和零售商的最优退货价格以及二者的双边际效益情况,并且发现了部分契约可以通过调整契约参数来消除这种矛盾边际效益现象,以此来实现供应链的协调。     

CVaR准则下双渠道供应链订货与信息搭便车行为

研究双渠道供应链中生产商负责的网上直销渠道对零售商负责的传统零售渠道的信息服务搭便车行为。假定产品需求随机且依赖于零售商信息服务水平,利用条件风险值准则和均衡分析方法建立了生产商与零售商均为风险厌恶者时双渠道供应链的集中式决策模型和分散式决策模型,利用合同理论给出了协调供应链的回购加信息服务补贴契约,利用数值仿真方法验证了模型的合理性和协调契约的有效性。研究表明,增加直销渠道对供应链而言是把“双刃剑”,既可吸引潜在需求,也应避免需求由零售渠道向直销渠道的大规模转移;直销渠道的信息服务搭便车行为有利于供应链各方;决策者越厌恶风险,其订货量越低,此时生产商、零售商和供应链的利润都将下降;当风险厌恶因子等于1时,决策者风险厌恶时双渠道供应链的决策与决策者风险中性时一致。