Competition and Coordination in a Two‐Channel Supply Chain

We study competition and coordination in a supply chain in which a single supplier both operates a direct channel and sells its product through multiple differentiated retailers. We study analytically the supply chain with symmetric retailers and find that the supplier prefers to have as many retailers as possible in the market, even if the retailers' equilibrium retail price is lower than that of the supplier, and even if the number of retailers and their cost or market advantage prevent sales through the direct channel. We find that the two‐channel supply chain may be subject to inefficiencies not present in the single‐channel supply chain. We show that several contracts known to coordinate a single‐channel supply chain do not coordinate the two‐channel supply chain; thus we propose a linear quantity discount contract and demonstrate its ability to perfectly coordinate the two‐channel supply chain with symmetric retailers. We provide some analytical results for the supply chain with asymmetric retailers and propose an efficient solution approach for finding the equilibrium. We find numerically that the supplier still benefits from having more retailers in the market and that linear quantity discount contracts can mitigate supply chain inefficiency, though they no longer achieve perfect coordination.     

考虑无缺陷退货下零售商转运的供应链回购契约研究

针对由单个供应商和同一连锁企业的两个零售商组成的供应链系统中无缺陷退货问题。在随机需求下,假设零售商努力水平与无缺陷退货率成反比,以及两个零售商之间可以相互进行库存转运,建立了期望收益决策模型。通过比较集中决策和分散决策下零售商订货量及各方期望利润,确定了零售商最优订货量和最优努力水平,并提出了改进的差异化回购契约,算例分析表明,改进的差异化回购契约能够达到供应链协调。     

Distributing a Product Line in a Decentralized Supply Chain

Although there is a rich literature on single product distribution in decentralized supply chains, the incentive problems that arise in distributing a product line have largely not been investigated. In practice, most manufacturers distribute a line of products with different features and qualities and not just a single product. Consider a manufacturer who distributes a product line through competing downstream retailers. In this setting, we investigate how and why the retailers' price and inventory decisions deviate from the centrally optimal decisions. Due to substitution between different product variants, as well as between different retailers, the incentive problems associated with distributing a product line are more complicated than that of distributing a single product. We characterize retailers' incentive distortions under a residual‐claimancy contract, and construct contracts that achieve channel coordination. We show that retail price floors or inventory buybacks, appropriately tailored to each product variant, are among the contracts that can achieve coordination. Using numerical simulations, we demonstrate how the optimal contract terms (such as wholesale prices and buyback prices) for each variant are influenced by the parameters of an underlying consumer choice model.     

零售商的资金约束对协调契约的影响分析

在零售商促销下,探讨了零售商的资金约束对使用收益共享契约和回购契约协调供应链的影响。分析了零售商拥有不同运营资金下供应链的契约协调问题,研究表明：在运营资金相对充裕下,收益共享契约不仅能协调供应链,且能实现渠道收益的任意分配,但回购契约不能实现渠道收益的任意分配,除非运营资金非常充裕;在运营资金不足下,收益共享契约仍有可能协调供应链,但回购契约不能协调供应链。讨论了资金的时间价值对两个契约协调供应链的影响,结果表明：在回购契约下,资金利率越大,具有资金约束零售商的供应链被协调的可能性越大,但资金利率对收益共享契约没有影响。最后提供了数值分析。研究中得到一些管理启示,可为资金约束供应链的协调管理提供理论借鉴。     

Coordinating Supply Chains via Advance‐Order Discounts,Minimum Order Quantities,and Delegations

To avoid inventory risks, manufacturers often place rush orders with suppliers only after they receive firm orders from their customers (retailers). Rush orders are costly to both parties because the supplier incurs higher production costs. We consider a situation where the supplier's production cost is reduced if the manufacturer can place some of its order in advance. In addition to the rush order contract with a pre‐established price, we examine whether the supplier should offer advance‐order discounts to encourage the manufacturer to place a portion of its order in advance, even though the manufacturer incurs some inventory risk. While the advance‐order discount contract is Pareto‐improving, our analysis shows that the discount contract cannot coordinate the supply chain. However, if the supplier imposes a pre‐specified minimum order quantity requirement as a qualifier for the manufacturer to receive the advance‐order discount, then such a combined contract can coordinate the supply chain. Furthermore, the combined contract enables the supplier to attain the first‐best solution. We also explore a delegation contract that either party could propose. Under this contract, the manufacturer delegates the ordering and salvaging activities to the supplier in return for a discounted price on all units procured. We find the delegation contract coordinates the supply chain and is Pareto‐improving. We extend our analysis to a setting where the suppliers capacity is limited for advance production but unlimited for rush orders. Our structural results obtained for the one‐supplier‐one‐manufacturer case continue to hold when we have two manufacturers.     

Coordination in a Single‐Supplier,Multi‐Retailer Distribution System: Supplier‐Facilitated Transshipments

We consider supplier‐facilitated transshipments for achieving supply chain coordination in a single supplier, multi‐retailer distribution system with non‐cooperative retailers. The previous transshipment literature has focused on coordination through retailer‐negotiated transshipments and thus does not consider the supplier's decision‐making. In contrast, in this study, we assume the supplier is an active participant in the system and we seek to understand how the supplier can facilitate the implementation of coordinating transshipments. We study a two‐period model with wholesale orders at the start of the first period and preventive transshipments performed at the start of the second period. Inspired by a supplier‐facilitated transshipment scheme observed in practice, we assume the supplier implements transshipments through a bi‐directional adjustment contract. Under this contract, each retailer can either buy additional inventory from, or sell back excess inventory to, the supplier. We show that coordination can be achieved through carefully designed contracts with state‐dependent adjustment prices and a wholesale price menu. We demonstrate that the supplier's role in facilitating coordinating transshipments is critical. In addition, we use our understanding of the coordinating contract form to derive some simpler and easier‐to‐implement heuristic contracts. We use a numerical study to demonstrate the value, to the supplier, of using the coordinating adjustment and wholesale prices, and to evaluate the heuristics’ performance.     

Impact of secondary market on consumer return policies and supply chain coordination

In this paper, we develop a unified model to study the inventory management problem of a product and the coordination of the associated supply chain consisting of a single supplier and considerably many retailers in the presence of a secondary market. Specifically, consumer returns are allowed in the initial sales. Then, we introduce a secondary market to salvage the returns and the leftovers from the initial sales. In this secondary market, a discount price will be offered to the consumers but no returns are accepted. Moreover, between the primary and the secondary market, there is an internal market where retailers can trade among themselves so that they are able to adjust their inventory levels to prepare for the sales in the secondary market. We study the retailers' and the supply chain's inventory decision in this case and highlight the impact of the secondary market on the sales as well as on the supply chain coordination contracts. We conclude that the secondary market helps us to increase the total wholesale volume. Numerical examples show that the total sales profit is also increased. However, the secondary market aggravates the incentive conflict between the retailers and the supply chain on deciding the optimal inventory levels and hence requires the supplier to offer more generous buyback or sales rebate contracts for coordination of the supply chain. Finally, we extend our analysis to more general cases and also show that our results are robust to some of the modeling assumptions.     

具有风险规避销售商的供应链最优回购契约

在销售商风险规避下,运用CVaR方法研究了供应商在直营渠道（集中式供应链）和非直营渠道（分散式供应链）下回购契约的设计问题。刻画了集中式供应链下回购契约完成渠道协调的充要条件,求解了分散式供应链的最优回购契约。比较分析了集中式和分散式供应链下回购契约的差异,得到以下结论：相对于集中式供应链,供应商在分散式供应链中趋向于设定更高的批发价格,或更低的回购价格。讨论了销售商的风险规避度对契约设计和供应商收益的影响,研究表明：销售商越规避风险,供应商的收益越低。最后提供一个案例讨论了模型在现实中的应用。     

Pay‐Back‐Revenue‐Sharing Contract in Coordinating Supply Chains with Random Yield

We consider coordination issues in supply chains where supplier's production process is subject to random yield losses. For a simple supply chain with a single supplier and retailer facing deterministic demand, a pay back contract which has the retailer paying a discount price for the supplier's excess units can provide the right incentive for the supplier to increase his production size and achieve coordination. Building upon this result, we consider coordination issues for two other supply chains: one with competing retailers, the other with stochastic demand. When retailers compete for both demand and supply, they tend to over‐order. We show that a combination of a pay back and revenue sharing mechanism can coordinate the supply chain, with the pay back mechanism correcting the supplier's under‐producing problem and the revenue sharing mechanism correcting the retailers' over‐ordering problem. When demand is stochastic, we consider a modified pay‐back‐revenue‐sharing contract under which the retailer agrees to not only purchase the supplier's excess output (beyond the retailer's order), but also share with the supplier a portion of the revenue made from the sales of the excess output. We show that this contract, by giving the supplier additional incentives in the form of revenue share, can achieve coordination.     

Quantity Flexibility Contract in the Presence of Discount Incentive

We design a new contract, which we refer to as the QFi contract, that combines the quantity flexibility (QF) mechanism and the price‐only discount incentive. Under the QF contract, the buyer does not assume full responsibility for the forecast, yet the supplier guarantees the availability of the forecasted quantity and extra buffer inventory. In contrast, the price‐only discount contract places full inventory burden on the buyer. We show that the proposed QFi contract effectively balances the inventory risk for both the buyer and the supplier considering both the QF and discount mechanisms. We also show that the QFi contract is able to achieve supply chain coordination. More importantly, the QFi contract's coordinating price scheme does not require knowledge of demand distribution. We identify areas where the buyer and supplier may both benefit from implementing the QFi contract as opposed to the extant QF or price‐only (wholesale) discount contractual decisions in a decentralized supply chain. We also specify the conditions under which supply chain coordination can be achieved in a win‐win manner. We conclude with managerial implications and provide directions for future research.     

The Dynamics of Domestic Gray Markets and Its Impact on Supply Chains

Gray markets are created by unauthorized retailers selling manufacturer's branded products. Similar to international gray markets, domestic gray markets are a growing phenomenon whose impact on supply chains is not clear. We consider a supply chain with one manufacturer and several authorized retailers who face a newsvendor problem and a domestic gray market. While a gray market provides an opportunity for retailers to clear their excess inventory (inventory‐correction effect), it also can be a threat to their demand (demand‐cannibalization effect). We first characterize the emerging equilibrium by assuming an MSRP environment. Comparing a decentralized and centralized system, we show that a wholesale pricing contract is quite efficient in a gray market environment; we explain the underlying mechanism and note some of the operational decisions that could hurt that efficiency. We show that the gray market price determines the degree of both the negative effects of demand‐cannibalization and the positive effects of inventory correction, which in turn determines the net impact of gray markets on the retailer's stocking choice and, ultimately, the manufacturer's profit. We then study the authorized retailers' problem as a price‐setting newsvendor. We observe that the gray market creates price competition between the authorized and unauthorized retailers, causing a drop in the primary market price. However, this price competition can be counteracted by the authorized retailers' stocking decision. Finally, we extend our model to consider the cases where the demand can be correlated across retailers.     

The Impact of Contracts and Competition on Upstream Innovation in a Supply Chain

We consider a supply chain with an upstream supplier who invests in innovation and a downstream manufacturer who sells to consumers. We study the impact of supply chain contracts with endogenous upstream innovation, focusing on three different contract scenarios: (i) a wholesale price contract, (ii) a quality‐dependent wholesale price contract, and (iii) a revenue‐sharing contract. We confirm that the revenue‐sharing contract can coordinate supply chain decisions including the innovation investment, whereas the other two contracts may result in underinvestment in innovation. However, the downstream manufacturer does not always prefer the revenue‐sharing contract; the manufacturer's profit can be higher with a quality‐dependent wholesale price contract than with a revenue‐sharing contract, specifically when the upstream supplier's innovation cost is low. We then extend our model to incorporate upstream competition between suppliers. By inviting upstream competition, with the wholesale price contract, the manufacturer can increase his profit substantially. Furthermore, under upstream competition, the revenue‐sharing contract coordinates the supply chain, and results in an optimal contract form for the manufacturer when suppliers are symmetric. We also analyze the case of complementary components suppliers, and show that most of our results are robust.     

顾客策略行为下基于CVaR和回购契约的供应链决策模型

依据条件风险值CVaR度量准则,建立了顾客策略行为下基于回购契约的供应链决策模型,分析了集中式供应链系统和分散式供应链系统中,风险规避供应商和风险规避零售商的决策行为。在此基础上,通过理论求解和数值分析,进一步探讨了顾客策略行为、成员风险规避性和供应链回购契约的交互影响。主要研究结论如下:第一,当供应链成员均为风险规避时,价格承诺可成为顾客策略行为的完美应对策略;第二,最优回购价格受到零售商和供应商的风险规避度的共同影响,零售商的最优订货量随产品回购价格的增加而增加;第三,当且仅当零售商与供应商的风险规避度相当时,回购契约能够实现分散式供应链系统的协调和利润在不同成员间的任意分配,否则回购契约不能实现供应链利润在不同成员间的任意分配。第四,当供应链成员风险规避不等时,零售商的利润分成随顾客对产品估价的增加而增加。同时,风险规避度较小方需要出让部分利润给风险规避度较大方才能够保证契约的实施。     

Flexibility or Cost Saving? Sourcing Decisions with Two Suppliers

This article studies a decentralized supply chain in which there are two suppliers and a single buyer. One supplier offers the quantity flexibility (QF) contract to the buyer, while the other offers the cheaper price. Under the QF contract, the buyer does not assume full responsibility for the forecast, yet the supplier guarantees the availability of the forecasted quantity with additional buffer inventory. On the other hand, the price‐only contract places full inventory burden on the buyer, but with a cheaper price. We study this problem from the buyer's perspective and solve for the buyer's optimal procurement and forecasting decisions. We identify areas where flexibility and cheaper price have an advantage, one over the other. Our results indicate that the buyer significantly benefits from having multiple sources of supply. We also find that, from the system's standpoint, a multisupplier system may outperform a single‐supplier supply chain under certain conditions. Interestingly, we observe that providing too much flexibility may benefit the low‐price supplier rather than benefiting the QF supplier. We discuss the managerial implications and provide directions for future research opportunities.     

Coordinating contracts for a financially constrained supply chain

We consider a financially constrained supply chain in which a supplier (leader) sells products to a retailer (follower) who has no access to bank financing due to her low credit rating. However, the supplier can borrow from a bank and offer trade credit to the retailer to alleviate her financial constraint. Failure to pay off a bank loan or trade credit incurs a variable default cost. We analyze the centralized version of the supply chain to obtain new coordination requirements. We then examine whether revenue-sharing, buyback, and all-unit quantity discount contracts can coordinate our supply chain. We show that the all-unit quantity discount contract fails to coordinate. However, the revenue-sharing and buyback contracts can coordinate the supply chain, but only when the supply chain has a sufficient total working capital. Moreover, they cannot allocate profit flexibly unless the supplier has a large enough working capital. Finally, we design a generalized revenue-sharing contract that coordinates the supply chain with flexible profit allocation, and also show by numerical examples its superiority over the revenue-sharing and buyback contracts.     

Price Incentives and Coordination in a Two‐Product Decentralized Supply Chain

We investigate pricing incentives for competing retailers who distribute two variants of a manufacturer's product in a decentralized supply chain. Under a two‐dimensional Hotelling model, we derive decentralized retailers' prices for the products, and distortions in pricing when compared to centrally optimal prices. We show that price distortions decrease as consumers' travel cost between retailers increases, due to less intense competition. However, price distortions do not change monotonically in consumers' switching cost between products within stores. To fix decentralized retailers' price distortions, we construct a two‐part pricing contract that coordinates the supply chain. We show that the coordinating contract is Pareto‐improving and analyze increase in the supply chain profit under coordination.     

基于看跌期权契约的应急物资采购储备模型

应急物资具有峰值需求量大,需求不确定性强,缺货成本高等特点,这使得政府必须在事前进行一定数量的物资储备。然而,由于应急物资需求的发生概率较低,针对食品药品等一类具有保质期限的物资,一旦在保质期限内需求未发生,则会造成大量的浪费与损失,加重政府的财政负担。虽然传统供应链中的回购契约可使政府将剩余物资回售给供应方,能够在一定程度上降低政府成本,但是供应方并没有因承担多余风险而获取到额外收益。基于此,本文设计了一种基于看跌期权契约的应急物资采购储备模型,用于解决保质期风险而引发的损失问题,并分析了实现政企供应链协调的机制,探讨了双方实现共赢协调的具体条件。此外,本文进一步表明与回购契约相比,基于看跌期权契约所建立的采购储备模式能够在降低政府成本的同时,合理地补偿供应方因承担多余风险而造成的损失,更好地保障了供应方的利益,达到了政府和供应方双赢的目的。     

Revenue‐Sharing vs. Wholesale‐Price Contracts in Assembly Systems with Random Demand

Assembly and kitting operations, as well as jointly sold products, are rather basic yet intriguing A decentralized supply chains, where achieving coordination through appropriate incentives is very important, especially when demand is uncertain. We investigate two very distinct types of arrangements between an assembler/retailer and its suppliers. One scheme is a vendor‐managed inventory with revenue sharing, and the other a wholesale‐price driven contract. In the VMI case, each supplier faces strategic uncertainty as to the amounts of components, which need to be mated with its own, that other suppliers will deliver. We explore the resulting components' delivery quantities equilibrium in this decentralized supply chain and its implications for participants' and system's expected profits. We derive the revenue shares the assembler should select in order to maximize its own profits. We then explore a revenue‐plus‐surplus‐subsidy incentive scheme, where, in addition to a share of revenue, the assembler also provides a subsidy to component suppliers for their unsold components. We show that, by using this two‐parameter contract, the assembler can achieve channel coordination and increase the profits of all parties involved. We then explore a wholesale‐price‐driven scheme, both as a single lever and in combination with buybacks. The channel performance of a wholesale‐price‐only scheme is shown to degrade with the number of suppliers, which is not the case with a revenue‐share‐only contract.     

Delegation vs. Control in Supply Chain Procurement under Competition

This paper studies the optimal component procurement strategies of two competing OEMs selling substitutable products. The OEMs outsource their production to a common contract manufacturer, who in turn needs an input from a component supplier. Each OEM may either directly procure the input from the component supplier, or delegate the procurement task to the contract manufacturer. We first analyze the OEMs' procurement game under a non‐strategic supplier whose component price is exogenously given. It is found that symmetric equilibria arise for most situations, that is, both OEMs either control or delegate their component procurement in equilibrium. Interestingly, despite the commonly‐held belief that the contract manufacturer would be worse off as OEMs gain component procurement control, we show that the contract manufacturer may enjoy a higher profit. Then we study the OEMs' procurement game under a strategic supplier who can set its component price. We find that the supplier's strategic pricing behavior plays a critical role in the equilibrium procurement structure. In particular, in the equilibrium under strategic supplier, the larger OEM always uses delegation while the smaller OEM may use either delegation or control. By identifying the driving forces behind the OEMs' procurement choices, this research helps explain observed industry practices and offer useful guidelines for firms' component sourcing decisions.     

Why Do We Observe Stockless Operations on the Internet? Stockless Operations Under Competition

Due to the proliferation of electronic commerce and the development of Internet technologies, many firms have considered new pricing‐inventory models. In this paper, we study the role of stockless (i.e., zero‐inventory) operations in online retailing by a considering duopoly competition in which two retailers compete to maximize profit by jointly optimizing their pricing and inventory decisions. In our model, the retailers are allowed to choose either an in‐stock policy or stockless operations with a discounted price. We first present the characteristics and properties of the equilibrium. We then demonstrate that the traditional outcome of asymmetric Bertrand competition is observed under head‐to‐head competition. However, when the two firms choose different operational policies, with corresponding optimal pricing, they can share the market under certain conditions. Finally, we report interesting observations on the interaction between pricing and inventory decisions obtained from an extensive computational study.