Fresh-product supply chain management with logistics outsourcing

We consider a supply chain in which a producer supplies a fresh product, through a third-party logistics (3PL) provider, to a distant market where a distributor purchases and sells it to end customers. The product is perishable, both the quantity and quality of which may deteriorate during the process of transportation. The market demand is random, sensitive to the selling price as well as the freshness of the product. We derive the optimal decisions for the three supply chain members, including the 3PL provider's transportation fee, the producer's shipping quantity and wholesale price, and the distributor's purchasing quantity and retail price. We find that the presence of the 3PL provider in the supply chain has a significant impact on its performance. We propose an incentive scheme to coordinate the supply chain. The scheme consists of two contracts, including a wholesale-market clearance (WMC) contract between the producer and the distributor, and a wholesale-price-discount sharing (WDS) contract between the producer and the 3PL provider. We show that the proposed contracts can eliminate the two sources of “double marginalization” that exist in the three-tier supply chain, and induce the three parties to act in a coordinated way.     

Supply Chain Management of Fresh Products with Producer Transportation*

This article considers a class of fresh‐product supply chains in which products need to be transported by the upstream producer from a production base to a distant retail market. Due to high perishablility a portion of the products being shipped may decay during transportation, and therefore, become unsaleable. We consider a supply chain consisting of a single producer and a single distributor, and investigate two commonly adopted business models: (i) In the “pull” model, the distributor places an order, then the producer determines the shipping quantity, taking into account potential product decay during transportation, and transports the products to the destination market of the distributor; (ii) In the “push” model, the producer ships a batch of products to a distant wholesale market, and then the distributor purchases and resells to end customers. By considering a price‐sensitive end‐customer demand, we investigate the optimal decisions for supply chain members, including order quantity, shipping quantity, and retail price. Our research shows that both the producer and distributor (and thus the supply chain) will perform better if the pull model is adopted. To improve the supply chain performance, we propose a fixed inventory‐plus factor (FIPF) strategy, in which the producer announces a pre‐determined inventory‐plus factor and the distributor compensates the producer for any surplus inventory that would otherwise be wasted. We show that this strategy is a Pareto improvement over the pull and push models for both parties. Finally, numerical experiments are conducted, which reveal some interesting managerial insights on the comparison between different business models.     

新鲜度信息不对称下生鲜农产品供应链协调

生鲜农产品供应链上下游存在新鲜度信息的不对称性,加剧了耗损。为此,迫切需要研究生产商隐瞒新鲜度信息的生鲜农产品供应链协调。基于Stackelberg博弈,使用单周期报童模型分别构建生产商和零售商的利润函数,分析供应链性质;并提出具体的回购契约形式进行供应链协调。研究认为：一般的批发价格契约下,即使生产商隐瞒农产品新鲜度信息,也不一定损害供应链总收益;回购契约可以保证新鲜度信息共享并协调供应链。最后,通过数值算例验证分析结论的有效性。     

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。     

不确定需求下的冷链分销商最优决策

针对新鲜产品供应链 (冷链) 中分销商, 引入保鲜努力刻画分销商投入的保鲜工作, 考虑新鲜产品到达市场的数量与质量, 分析冷链分销商的最优决策问题.与前人研究相比, 本文使用加法形式需求函数刻画市场需求, 并使用相关企业数据验证加法形式需求函数合理性, 完善了冷链分销商决策问题的相关研究.研究发现, 当保鲜努力外生时, 分销商的最优订货数量和最优零售价格只与保鲜努力有关;当零售价格外生时, 分销商的最优保鲜努力与产品实际单位成本关于保鲜努力函数的一阶最优条件有关;当订货数量外生时, 分销商制定的零售价格随保鲜努力增加而增大, 所获得的利润也随保鲜努力递增, 但边际利润随保鲜努力递减.最后, 将所得结论应用于中国500强民营企业卓尔控股有限公司旗下的小雪冷链 (武汉) 物流有限公司, 为该公司提供相应的保鲜努力投入策略.     

Supply Chain Coordination in the Presence of Gray Markets and Strategic Consumers

The practice of diverting genuine products to unauthorized gray markets continues to challenge companies in various industries and creates intense competition for authorized channels. Recent industry surveys report that the abuse of channel incentives is a primary reason for the growth of gray market activities. Therefore, it is crucial that companies take the presence of gray markets into consideration when they design contracts to distribute products through authorized retailers. This issue has received little attention in the extensive literature on contracting and supply chain coordination. In this study, we analyze the impacts of gray markets on two classic contracts, wholesale price and quantity discount, in a supply chain with one manufacturer and one retailer when the retailer has the opportunity to sell to a domestic gray market. Our analysis provides interesting and counterintuitive results. First, a classic quantity‐discount contract that normally coordinates the supply chain can perform so poorly in the presence of a gray market that the supply chain would be better off using a wholesale price contract instead. Second, the presence of gray market can also degrade the performance of the wholesale price contract; therefore, a more sophisticated contract is needed for coordinating the supply chain. We show that contracts that solely depend on retailer's order quantity cannot coordinate the supply chain, and provide the conditions for coordinating the supply chain with price‐dependent quantity discount contracts. We also provide comparative statics and show that when there is a gray market, coordinating the supply chain enhances total consumer welfare.     

买方市场时效性产品的供应链弹性契约优化模型

在买方市场环境下,产品越来越具有时效性,寿命周期越来越短,为了规避风险,经销商往往不以实际预测量来订货。针对该问题,本文在已有的数量弹性契约研究的基础上,以激励相容理论和供应链理论为理念,引入回购契约的方法,提出了一个可以激励经销商的弹性契约优化模型,弥补了弹性契约的不足。用一个算例分析检验了该模型,结果表明,通过调节批发价格和返利比例来引导经销商的订货量趋势,当经销商期望利润最大的订货量与市场平均需求相等时,经销商会客观地估测未来需求量并报给制造商,同时制造商还在此基础上确定具体批发价格和返利比例以使自己利润最大化,从而使经销商与制造商共担供应链环节中的市场风险,并共同为优化整体供应链做出努力。     

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。     

The Newsvendor Problem and Price‐Only Contract When Bankruptcy Costs Exist

We study a supply chain of a supplier selling via a wholesale price contract to a financially constrained retailer who faces stochastic demand. The retailer might need to borrow money from a bank to execute his order. The bank offers a fairly priced loan for relevant risks. Failure of loan repayment leads to a costly bankruptcy (fixed administrative costs, costs proportional to sales, and a depressed collateral value). We identify the retailer's optimal order quantity as a function of the wholesale price and his total wealth (working capital and collateral). The analysis of the supplier's optimal wholesale price problem as a Stackelberg game, with the supplier the leader and the retailer the follower, leads to unique equilibrium solutions in wholesale price and order quantity, with the equilibrium order quantity smaller than the traditional newsvendor one. Furthermore, in the presence of the retailer's bankruptcy risks, increases in the retailer's wealth lead to increased supplier's wholesale prices, but without the retailer's bankruptcy risks the supplier's wholesale prices stay the same or decrease in retailer's wealth.     

Gray Markets,A Product of Demand Uncertainty and Excess Inventory

Diverting large quantities of goods from authorized distribution channels to unauthorized or “gray market” channels, albeit legal, significantly affects both firms and consumers due to effects on price, revenue, service and warranty availability, and product availability. In this paper we consider mechanisms by which the uncertainty surrounding inventory ordering decisions drives gray markets. We start with a minimal stochastic supply chain model composed of a producer and a retailer; then we restructure the model to add a distributor whereby the distributor and authorized retailer have the option of diverting inventory to a gray market. Our analysis sheds light on three issues: impacts of diversion on the various supply chain participants, strategies producers could use to combat or exploit gray markets, and important considerations for authorized retailers trying to set optimal order quantities in the presence of a gray market. Our analysis yields new insights into the behavior and impact of gray markets, which can inform management strategies and policies for confronting them.     

Distributional and Peer‐Induced Fairness in Supply Chain Contract Design

Members of a supply chain often make profit comparisons. A retailer exhibits peer‐induced fairness concerns when his own profit is behind that of a peer retailer interacting with the same supplier. In addition, a retailer exhibits distributional fairness when his supplier's share of total profit is larger than his own. While existing research focuses exclusively on distributional fairness concerns, this study investigates how both types of fairness might interact and influence economic outcomes in a supply chain. We consider a one‐supplier and two‐retailer supply chain setting, and we show that (i) in the presence of distributional fairness alone, the wholesale price offer is lower than the standard wholesale price offer; (ii) in the presence of both types of fairness, the second wholesale price is higher than the first wholesale price; and (iii) in the presence of both types of fairness, the second retailer makes a lower profit and has a lower share of the total supply chain profit than the first retailer. We run controlled experiments with subjects motivated by substantial monetary incentives and show that subject behaviors are consistent with the model predictions. Structural estimation on the data suggests that peer‐induced fairness is more salient than distributional fairness.     

考虑消费者效用与保鲜的生鲜农产品EOQ模型

针对生鲜农产品新鲜度随时间减小的特点,构造受生鲜农产品新鲜度和零售价格影响的消费者时变效用函数,分析了消费者在不同时刻够买生鲜农产品的效用和数量的变化,并基于此建立了消费者偏好影响需求的生鲜农产品EOQ模型;以提高消费者效用为目的,分析了两种不同保鲜情形下零售商的最优订货决策和最优保鲜投入。研究发现,零售商的最优保鲜投入并不能使消费者效用最大化,满足消费者对生鲜农产品新鲜度的要求必须依靠政府的宏观调控。     

Supplier competition and its impact on firm׳s sourcing strategy

Most research on firms׳ sourcing strategies assumes that wholesale prices and reliability of suppliers are exogenous. It is of our interest to study suppliers׳ competition on both wholesale price and reliability and firms׳ corresponding optimal sourcing strategy under complete information. In particular, we study a problem in which a firm procures a single product from two suppliers, taking into account suppliers׳ price and reliability differences. This motivates the suppliers to compete on these two factors. We investigate the equilibria of this supplier game and the firm׳s corresponding sourcing decisions. Our study shows that suppliers׳ reliability often plays a more important role than wholesale price in supplier competition and that maintaining high reliability and a high wholesale price is the ideal strategy for suppliers if multiple options exist. The conventional wisdom implies that low supply reliability and high demand uncertainty motivate dual-sourcing. We notice that when the suppliers׳ shared market/transportation network is often disrupted and demand uncertainty is high, suppliers׳ competition on both price and reliability may render the sole-sourcing strategy to be optimal in some cases that depend on the format of suppliers׳ cost functions. Moreover, numerical study shows that when the cost or vulnerability (to market disruptions) of one supplier increases, its profit and that of the firm may not necessarily decrease under supplier competition.     

On the Advantage of Quantity Leadership When Outsourcing Production to a Competitive Contract Manufacturer

This study investigates a supply chain comprising an original equipment manufacturer (OEM) and a contract manufacturer (CM), in which the CM acts as both upstream partner and downstream competitor to the OEM. The two parties can engage in one of three Cournot competition games: a simultaneous game, a sequential game with the OEM as the Stackelberg leader, and a sequential game with the CM as the Stackelberg leader. On the basis of these three basic games, this study investigates the two parties' Stackelberg leadership/followership decisions. When the outsourcing quantity and wholesale price are exogenously given, either party may prefer Stackelberg leadership or followership. For example, when the wholesale price or the proportion of production outsourced to the CM is lower than a threshold value, both parties prefer Stackelberg leadership and, consequently, play a simultaneous game in the consumer market. When the outsourcing quantity and wholesale price are decision variables, the competitive CM sets a wholesale price sufficiently low to allow both parties to coexist in the market, and the OEM outsources its entire production to this CM. This study also examines the impact of the supply chain parties' bargaining power on contract outcomes by considering a wholesale price that is determined via the generalized Nash bargaining scheme, finding a Stackelberg equilibrium to be sustained when the CM's degree of bargaining power is great and the non‐competitive CM's wholesale price is high.     

Coping with Gray Markets: The Impact of Market Conditions and Product Characteristics

Gray markets, also known as parallel imports, have created fierce competition for manufacturers in many industries. We analyze the impact of parallel importation on a price‐setting manufacturer that serves two markets with uncertain demand, and characterize her policy against parallel importation. We show that ignoring demand uncertainty can take a significant toll on the manufacturer's profit, highlighting the value of making price and quantity decisions jointly. We find that adjusting prices is more effective in controlling gray market activity than reducing product availability, and that parallel importation forces the manufacturer to reduce her price gap while demand uncertainty forces her to lower prices. Furthermore, we explore the impact of market conditions (such as market base, price sensitivity, and demand uncertainty) and product characteristics (“fashion” vs. “commodity”) on the manufacturer's policy towards parallel importation. We also provide managerial insights about the value of strategic decision‐making by comparing the optimal policy to the uniform pricing policy that has been adopted by some companies to eliminate gray markets entirely. The comparison indicates that the value of making price and quantity decisions strategically is highest for moderately different market conditions and non‐commodity products.     

预测精度和成本双时变的短生命周期产品供应链优化与协调

对于提前期可压缩的短生命周期产品供应链,压缩提前期可以提高销售商的需求预测精度,但增加了制造商的生产成本,因而供应链面临何时订货、订多少,以及如何实现Pareto改进的挑战。通过建立数学模型并求解,分析了分散系统和集中系统的最优决策,进一步开发了一个激励方案以实现供应链成员之间的协调。研究结果表明:具有订货回馈与惩罚的动态批发价契约能够有效协调双时变参数供应链,契约参数α在一定范围内取值可实现供需双方共赢。     

考虑保鲜努力与增值服务的生鲜电商供应链最优决策与协调

针对一个生鲜电商与一个生鲜供应商组成的供应链，其中生鲜电商负责销售农产品并提供增值服务，而生鲜供应商负责农产品的保鲜配送。考虑保鲜努力与服务水平均会影响生鲜农产品的市场需求，通过构建集中式与分散式下的生鲜电商供应链决策模型，分析了新鲜度需求弹性、服务需求弹性等因素对最优决策的影响，并对比分析了分散式与集中式决策下的最优决策。在此基础上，设计了"收益共享-双向成本分担"契约，通过合理设计契约参数实现了生鲜电商供应链的完美协调与帕累托改进。最后，进一步深入分析了供应链在协调前后的最优决策变化，并用数值算例进行了考察与验证。研究发现：供应链在协调后必然会提高产品新鲜度与服务水平，但可能会导致更低或更高的生鲜农产品销售价格。当新鲜度需求弹性与服务需求弹性较低时，生鲜电商在协调后会制定相对更低的产品价格，实施"优质低价"策略；而在新鲜度需求弹性或服务需求弹性高于某一水平时，生鲜电商在协调后会制定相对更高的产品价格，实施"优质优价"策略。     

Dynamic Procurement,Quantity Discounts,and Supply Chain Efficiency

We study a model with a single supplier and a single buyer who interact multiple times before the buyer sells her product in the end‐consumer market. We show that when the supplier uses a wholesale price contract, even under perfect foresight, the supplier, the buyer, and the end consumers benefit from multiple trading opportunities versus a one‐shot procurement agreement.     

基于价格保护策略的渠道协调

针对当今产品生命周期缩短、用户需求不确定性增强、产品价值急剧下跌的市场竞争环境,分析了实现渠道协调的价格保护策略,给出了基于单次订购二阶段价格保护额度最优策略动态模型.研究表明,通过设置合理的批发价格和价格保护补偿额度,能够导致优化的零售商订购数量,并进一步证明,该策略可以优化渠道联盟的总体绩效,而且渠道成员可以达到双赢的目的,从而实现渠道协调.     

公平感对供应链成员定价决策影响的研究

本文研究公平感对由一个供应商和一个零售商组成的二级供应链中的定价决策的影响,其中供应商决定批发价格,零售商在接受供应商批发价格合同之后决定零售价格,市场需求受到零售价格的线性影响.采用管理实验方法得出,首先,供应商的批发价格和零售商的零售价格均分别低于完全理性假设下的均衡解;供应商是利他性的,即,乐于看到零售商收益的增加,并且,供应商认为零售商是完全理性的,即零售商的决策目标是最大化自身收益;然而,零售商却是刻毒性的,即乐于看到供应商收益的减少.其次,批发价格的变异度大于零售价格的,即供应商决策的难度大于零售商的.给管理者的启示是:供应商应考虑零售商的刻毒性的特征,降低批发价格,以提高零售商接受供应商所提批发价格的概率;此外,还应该为供应商提供辅助决策手段,以降低批发价格的变异度,提高决策的准确性