考虑战略顾客行为时的供应链性能分析与协调

动态定价策略的广泛应用使得越来越多的顾客具有了战略性,战略顾客会根据产品在销售期内的价格路径确定最优购买时机,零售商则根据顾客的购买行为确定订货数量和销售价格.研究了双方静态博弈时的理性预期均衡解和零售商进行数量承诺时的情形.研究表明:理性预期均衡时的最优销售价格、最优存货数量和最优期望利润分别小于标准报童模型的情形;数量承诺时的最优存货数量小于理性预期均衡时的最优存货数量;最优期望利润则大于理性预期均衡时的最优期望利润,并且在一定条件下可能会大于标准报童模型的最优期望利润,战略顾客行为的存在对零售商可能有利.最后分析了在分散式供应链中如何利用收入分享契约和数量折扣契约实现供应链协调.     

The price-setting newsvendor with service and loss constraints

Current performance measurement systems consider not only financial measures, like costs and profits, but also non-financial indicators with respect to customer service, quality and flexibility. Using the newsvendor model, we analyse the respective influence of these possibly conflicting performance measures on important operations and marketing decisions, for instance the order quantity and the selling price of a product. As in the classical newsvendor model for price-independent as well as price-dependent demand distribution, the objective of the firm is to maximise expected profit. In this paper, we also consider a service constraint—a lower bound for the level of product availability—and a loss constraint—an upper bound for the probability of a loss occurring. For both models, we provide conditions for the existence of solutions. We then analyse the influence of demand variability using a set of conditions specifying the quantiles of the predetermined performance measures: a higher variability of demand implies a smaller admissible region of the decision variables. In the price-independent case, the optimal solution has a control-limit structure: the optimal order quantity is thus given either by the classical newsvendor solution or by the control-limits corresponding to the constraints. In the price-setting model with multiplicative demand, this structure is used to check whether small admissible prices are determined by the service constraint or by the loss constraint. Using these structural results, a procedure is developed to more easily enable the computation of the optimal values of the order quantity, selling price and expected profit.     

Price-setting newsvendor with strategic consumers

We consider a newsvendor who sells a single product over a single season with the objective of determining both the selling price and stock quantity to maximize the expected profit. The customers are strategic and we consider two demand cases: additive and multiplicative. For each case, we derive the newsvendor׳s optimal decisions and demonstrate that neglecting the price-sensitivity of demand leads the newsvendor to make sub-optimal decisions. Moreover, we show that under certain conditions, strategic consumer behavior may positively affect the newsvendor׳s optimal expected profit in the additive demand case.     

基于收益共享-双向期权契约的供应链金融风险控制研究

通过核心企业的信用水平为中小企业获取贷款提供担保,使得整个供应链有效运行是实施供应链金融的重要意义。本文考虑分销商（核心企业）-零售商（贷款企业）组成的二级供应链,为了降低银行面临的零售商违约风险,在银行监督下,分销商与零售商引入收益共享—双向期权契约。本文计算得到了零售商的违约概率,在此基础上,深入分析了各方期望收益、零售商最优初始订货量与最优期权购买数量、分销商最优收益共享比例、银行下侧风险规避前提下可参考的收益共享比例范围。并构造了数值算例,探讨了期权执行价格、收益共享比例及银行质押率等关键参数对风险控制方面的影响。本文所得结果能够为银行及企业在供应链金融决策方面提供参考。     

Evaluating manufacturer's buyback policies in a single-period two-echelon framework under price-dependent stochastic demand

This paper attempts to model the profitability of a secondary market, in a newsvendor setting, to a profit-maximizing manufacturer, who is offering to the retailer a buyback policy for the unsold merchandise left at the end of the selling season. With a buyback agreement, the manufacturer shares the risks of demand uncertainty, thus inducing the buyer to place larger orders. The manufacturer's risk is mitigated to some extent by the availability of an extra market to dispose off the unsold merchandise. Both parties are risk-neutral profit-maximizers and both have the same information about the final demand for the product and its uncertainty. The manufacturer's decision is to arrive at an optimal wholesale price and the buyback price. Based on this offer, the retailer in turn sets the optimal amount of merchandise to purchase, as well as the unit selling price to meet a price-dependent uncertain demand for the merchandise in question. Due to the difficulty of obtaining analytical results, we have undertaken a numerical analysis to (i) compare the optimal policies across demand functions and error structures for three situations namely the no-incentive case and the buyback policies with and without a secondary market; (ii) indicate the conditions whereby the trade incentive is beneficial to both parties; (iii) assess the efficacy of the policies using two other performance indices (probability of achieving a target profit, and pass-through ratios) alternate to profit maximization; and (iv) conjecture the conditions for successful buyback policies and the nature of the benefits from the secondary market.     

基于预期的报童问题研究

Koszegi与Rabin认为参照点往往由决策者的理性预期确定，本文选取报童的预期作为参照点，利用参照依赖偏好理论对报童问题进行了研究。研究发现，基于预期的报童的最优订货量不仅与货物销售的概率分布、价格等有关还与报童的损失厌恶程度有关。如果报童是损失厌恶的，报童的订货量要小于经典报童问题的订货量；反之，报童的订货量则大于经典报童问题的订货量，该结论与大部分实证结果是一致的。最后，用算例来验证了文中有关结论的正确性。     

A heuristic approach to in-season capacity allocation in a multi-product newsvendor model

Based on an actual problem, we develop and test two heuristics for optimizing the newsvendor’s response to new in-season demand information for a multi-product single-period problem. In this model, in addition to the quantities produced prior to the beginning of the selling season, the newsvendor can produce additional quantities of some products after the selling season begins. Sales data of all products is updated daily, and using these updates, the newsvendor can test if the quantities already produced are still optimal. If the newsvendor finds that the actual demand of a product up to a point in time indicates that the quantity already produced is too small, then the product becomes a candidate for an incremental production quantity. In Heuristic I, we fix the pre-season production quantities to those that are optimal for the classic newsvendor model. In Heuristic II, because the newsvendor may have some recourse during the selling season, we allow for reductions in the pre-season production quantities from the optimal classic newsvendor model production quantities. Using a simulation experiment, we show that even under an unbiased forecast, both heuristics result in higher profit, with Heuristic II outperforming Heuristic I. The increase in profits from using the heuristics increases significantly with the number of products for which the forecast is biased. In addition, the improvements in profits decrease significantly as the lead time and the penalty for late production increase.     

考虑资金收益情况下的供应链回购契约

在制造商的资金收益率大于零售商资金收益率的情况下,以报童模型为基础,研究了资金收益对回购契约的影响.系统预期利润变为与批发价相关,利用拉格朗日方程求解了满足零售商参与约束、同时使系统和制造商预期利润取得最大值的契约参数.与不考虑资金收益情况下的供应链协调不同的是:订货批量大于相应批发价下不考虑零售商参与约束的最优订货批量;若零售商的保留利润一定,则回购价增大;回购价可以大于批发价,批发价可以小于制造商的边际生产成本.     

合同订购与现货市场混合交易下的双渠道供应链优化决策

为了更好地匹配需求与供应, 提高企业收益和服务水平, 本文研究了合同订购与现货市场交易结合下的双渠道供应链优化决策问题。首先分析了单纯批发价合同订购模式下的决策, 进一步考虑现货市场单向交易及双向交易的情形, 将供应链回购合同与数量柔性合同引入单向现货市场, 建立了这两类合同订购分别与现货市场补货、现货市场卖货相结合的订购模型, 以及批发价合同订购与现货市场买卖双向交易联合的决策模型。分析了不同模式下回购价格、缺货成本、补货成本、现货价格、现货价格波动及风险偏好对订购决策的影响, 并通过算例仿真, 分析了各类现货市场的使用对销售商收益的影响。结果表明, 合同订购与双向现货市场结合可以充分利用现货市场即时交易的优势, 提高供应链效益;而合同订购与单向现货市场结合, 虽然可以通过合同提高供货水平, 降低库存积压风险, 但该情形需要考虑供应商的回购或补货价格, 销售商仍有一定风险。不论单向或双向现货市场与合同订购的联合, 均可使供应链的利润优于单纯合同订购的情形。     

The newsvendor problem with barter exchange

Barter exchange, as an alternative to move distressed inventory, has become increasingly popular in business. Many companies barter their unsold product for the product they need via barter exchange platforms at full prices. In this paper we consider the newsvendor problem with the barter exchange option. A retailer (the newsvendor) facing stochastic demand not only sells its product, but also buys other product that it needs from the market. It either trades its unsold product for the product it needs on a barter platform or disposes of its unsold product at discounted prices at the end of the selling season like in the classical newsvendor model. We derive the retailer’s optimal order quantity, then analytically and numerically examine the impacts of barter on the retailer’s inventory decisions and profit. We find that barter exchange can help the retailer to manage demand uncertainty and improve profit. The optimal order quantity decreases with barter commission and barter uncertainty, while increases with demand uncertainty and the value of the product that the retailer needs. Barter is more advantageous with lower barter commission, larger demand uncertainty, lower barter uncertainty, and higher value of the product it needs.     

考虑保鲜努力与数量/质量弹性的农产品三级供应链协调优化

以供应具有季节性的农产品为研究对象,研究了由农户-第三方物流供应商（TPLP）-零售商组成的三级供应链协调问题。将农产品的数量和质量损耗均视为TPLP保鲜努力的内生变量,分别建立了分散与集中决策模式下的动态博弈模型。分析表明分散决策模式下供应链各成员的决策会导致产品销售量和销售价格扭曲,严重影响供应链绩效。针对三级供应链中的两个交易过程,并基于对系统中相关决策变量的变化及影响因素分析,分别设计了成本分担和收益共享协调契约,并论证了在一定条件下该组合协调机制可以显著扩大农产品的销售量,实现供应链各成员收益的帕累托改进。最后,通过算例验证了文章结论,并分析了努力水平对不同农产品质量和数量损耗的改善程度（数量/质量弹性）对农产品三级供应链决策及协调效果的影响。     

Dynamic Pricing and Inventory Management with Regular and Expedited Supplies

We consider a periodic‐review inventory system with regular and expedited supply modes. The expedited supply is faster than the regular supply but incurs a higher cost. Demand for the product in each period is random and sensitive to its selling price. The firm determines its order quantity from each supply in each period as well as its selling price to maximize the expected total discounted profit over a finite or an infinite planning horizon. We show that, in each period if it is optimal to order from both supplies, the optimal inventory policy is determined by two state‐independent thresholds, one for each supply mode, and a list price is set for the product; if only the regular supply is used, the optimal policy is a state‐dependent base‐stock policy, that is, the optimal base‐stock level depends on the starting inventory level, and the optimal selling price is a markdown price that decreases with the starting inventory level. We further study the operational impact of such supply diversification and show that it increases the firm's expected profit, reduces the optimal safety‐stock levels, and lowers the optimal selling price. Thus that diversification is beneficial to both the firm and its customers. Building upon these results, we conduct a numerical study to assess and compare the respective benefit of dynamic pricing and supply diversification.     

Risk-averse and risk-taking newsvendors: a conditional expected value approach

Introduction  We consider a company sourcing a product with short life cycle to stock using the framework of the newsvendor model. Traditionally, risk-neutral inventory managers are considered optimizing the expected cost or profit. But experimental findings state that the actual quantity ordered deviates from the optimal quantity derived from the classical newsvendor model. Model  Recently, the newsvendor model with objectives different from maximizing expected profit has been an active field of research. Here, we propose a newsvendor model where the inventory manager can control internal and customer-oriented performance measures. The objective function is a convex combination of conditional expected values of low and high profits, respectively. Results   We give a qualitative characterization of the optimal order quantity and the resulting performance measures in dependence of the model parameters. A risk-averse inventory manager cannot Pareto-dominate a risk-neutral or risk-taking inventory manager with respect to the expected profit and the level of product availability. Finally, the risk preferences of the inventory manager are expressed as a function of the profit value of the product with respect to the level of product availability and the probability of loss, respectively.      

Decision Making and the Price Setting Newsvendor: Experimental Evidence

We present an experimental study of the price‐setting newsvendor problem, which extends the traditional framework by allowing the decision maker to determine both the selling price and the order quantity of a given item. We compare behavior under this model with two benchmark conditions where subjects have a single decision to make (price or quantity). We observe that subjects deviate from the theoretical benchmarks when they are tasked with a single decision. They also exhibit anchoring behavior, where their anchor is the expected demand when quantity is the decision variable and is the initial inventory level when price is the decision variable. When decision makers set quantity and price concurrently, we observe no significant difference between the normative (i.e., expected profit‐maximizing) prices and the decision makers’ price choices. Quantity decisions move further from the normative benchmarks (compared to when subjects have a single decision to make) when the ratio of cost to price is less than half. When this ratio is reversed, there is no significant difference between order levels in single‐ and multi‐task settings. In the multidecision framework, we also observe a tendency to match orders and expected demand levels, which subjects can control using prices.     

Determining Order Quantity and Selling Price by Geometric Programming: Optimal Solution,Bounds, and Sensitivity*

This paper presents a geometric programming (GP) approach to finding a profit-maximizing selling price and order quantity for a retailer. Demand is treated as a nonlinear function of price with a constant elasticity. The proposed GP approach finds optimal solutions for both no-quantity discounts and continuous quantity discounts cases. This approach is superior to the traditional approaches of solving a system of nonlinear equations. Since the profit function is not concave, the traditional approaches may require an exhaustive search, especially for the continuous discounts schedule case. By applying readily available theories in GP, we easily can find global optimal solutions for both cases. More importantly, the GP approach provides lower and upper bounds on the optimal profit level and sensitivity results which are unavailable from the traditional approaches. These bounding and sensitivity results are further utilized to provide additional important managerial implications on pricing and lot-sizing policies.     

Ordering,Pricing, and Lead‐Time Quotation Under Lead‐Time and Demand Uncertainty

In this article, we study the newsvendor problem with endogenous setting of price and quoted lead‐time. This problem can be observed in situations where a firm orders semi‐finished product prior to the selling season and customizes the product in response to customer orders during the selling season. The total demand during the selling season and the lead‐time required for customization are uncertain. The demand for the product depends not only on the selling price but also on the quoted lead‐time. To set the quoted lead‐time, the firm has to carefully balance the benefit of increasing demand as the quoted lead‐time is reduced against the cost of increased tardiness. Our model enables the firm to determine the optimal selling price, quoted lead‐time, and order quantity simultaneously, and provides a new set of insights to managers.     

MAXIMIZING THE PROBABILITY OF ACHIEVING A TARGET PROFIT IN A TWO-PRODUCT NEWSBOY PROBLEM*

This paper explores the two-product newsboy problem. Solution procedures are developed to find the optimal production quantities of each product that will maximize the probability of achieving a profit target. The problem is shown to be surprisingly challenging, and numerical results obtained for only the more restrictive cases exhibit interesting behavior with important decision implications. For example, the results suggest that, if a firm has two single-product divisions and each will receive a bonus for achieving a profit target, it is beneficial for the two divisions to cooperate if the targets are lax and the profit margins are high, but not if the targets are tight and the profit margins low. Also, between two products having different profit margins, one should produce more of the product with the lower profit margin if the target is sufficiently lax. This exploration motivates further efforts in solving the two-product problem for the more general cases and also in extending the problem to three or more products.     

The loss-averse newsvendor problem

Newsvendor models are widely used in the literature, and usually based upon the assumption of risk neutrality. This paper uses loss aversion to model manager's decision-making behavior in the single-period newsvendor problem. We find that if shortage cost is not negligible, then a loss-averse newsvendor may order more than a risk-neutral newsvendor. We also find that the loss-averse newsvendor's optimal order quantity may increase in wholesale price and decrease in retail price, which can never occur in the risk-neutral newsvendor model.     

多类顾客环境下报童模型中库存分配策略研究

考虑一个报童模型中多类顾客的库存分配问题,将顾客按照他们愿意支付价格的高低划分为不同级别。零售商在销售期初决定产品订货量,并在销售期内决定接受或者拒绝不同顾客的需求,以最大化销售期内的期望总利润。将销售期分成大量足够小的时间单位,通过建立一个反向Bellman动态规划方程,以优化每个时间单位内的库存分配策略,并得到了零售商最优的期初订货量。通过与没有库存分配策略下零售商的期望利润进行比较,算例分析得出库存分配策略可以大幅提高零售商的利润。这主要是因为通过库存分配可以使得零售商从高端顾客中获取更多利润,同时能够减小期初的订货量,以节约采购成本和库存持有成本。     

延迟支付下短生命周期产品批发价契约研究

在需求随机且允许延迟支付的情况下,如果零售商的销售款不足以清偿应支付给制造商的货款,制造商将承担一定的回款风险。对此,以报童模型为基础,针对短生命周期产品建立了延迟支付下的批发价契约模型。分析表明,如果需求分布是IGFR,那么对于一定的批发价,零售商有确定的最优订货批量。制造商的预期利润是批发价的递增函数。制造商根据零售商至少应获得的预期利润来确定批发价。当满足一定条件时供应链能够实现协调,但这是一种系统利润分配缺乏柔性的协调。