The Effect of Delayed Incentives on Supply Chain Profits and Consumer Surplus

We examine the use of consumer cash mail‐in rebates offered by a manufacturer in a Stackelberg game where the manufacturer is the leader and the retailer is the follower. Our analysis indicates that rebates are profitable for manufacturers if consumers are inconsistent in the sense that their rebate valuation when they make purchase decisions is independent of their redemption probabilities when they make redemption decisions. If the manufacturer keeps the wholesale price unchanged, then the rebate increases the retailer's profit by a larger amount than the increase in the manufacturer's profit. If the manufacturer jointly optimizes the wholesale price and rebate, then the increase in the manufacturer's profit is twice the increase in the retailer's profit. The retailer responds to rebates by increasing the retail price, which increases the margin paid by consumers who do not redeem the rebate. On average, consumer surplus decreases when it is optimal for manufacturers to offer rebates. We suggest incentive schemes that make it worthwhile for retailers to limit the price increase. In these incentive schemes, the manufacturer imposes a negative relationship between the rebate value and the retail price. We show that such incentives increase supply chain profits.     

Pre‐Orders for New To‐be‐Released Products Considering Consumer Loss Aversion

Advance selling through pre‐orders is a strategy to transfer inventory risk from a retailer to consumers. A newsvendor retailer can have three strategies to choose from: no advance selling allowed (NAS), moderate advance selling with a moderate discount for pre‐orders (MAS), and deep advance selling with a deep discount for pre‐orders (DAS). This research studies how a retailer could design an advance selling strategy to maximize her own profits. We find some interesting results. For example, there exist two thresholds for the selling season profit margin and two thresholds for consumer's expected valuation. For products with higher profit margin than the high threshold on profit margin, a retailer should always use DAS. For products with medium profit margin within the two thresholds, a retailer should adopt MAS if consumer's expected valuation is lower than the high threshold and use DAS otherwise. For products with lower profit margin than the low threshold, a retailer should use NAS, DAS, or MAS, respectively, if consumer's expected valuation is lower than the low threshold, higher than the high threshold, or between the two thresholds, respectively. Through sensitivity analyses, we also show the effects of multiple consumer characteristics on a retailer's optimal advance selling strategy.     

Coordinating a Supply Chain When Facing Strategic Consumers

This article examines the impact of strategic consumers on the efficiency and coordination of a supply chain. We consider a supply chain consisting of a manufacturer and a newsvendor retailer selling a seasonal product to strategic consumers, who may choose to wait for clearance sales to maximize their intertemporal utility. Under a prenegotiated supply contract, the retailer chooses retail price and ordering quantity simultaneously. After that, the strategic consumers, who may be heterogeneous in their patience levels, make purchasing decisions. We find that strategic consumer behavior can hurt the supply chain efficiency due to severe double marginalization, and that a simple buyback contract can coordinate the supply chain. Nevertheless, we show that the supply chain does become more difficult to coordinate when strategic consumers are present: the set of buyback contractual terms that coordinate the chain shrinks as consumers are more willing to wait, and the chain profit cannot be arbitrarily allocated between the firms. Contrary to popular intuition, this result implies that the retailer may enjoy some benefit from consumers' strategic waiting. In addition, we find that the retailer's gain is the highest when impatient and patient consumers are comparably mixed in the population.      

Two-period pricing and ordering policy for the dominant retailer in a two-echelon supply chain with demand uncertainty

Retailing channels are increasingly being dominated by ‘power’ retailers who are in a position to dictate prices and ordering schedules to manufacturers and suppliers. A dominant retailer, such as Wal-Mart, has the ‘power’ to decide retail prices of products because there are so many manufacturers who are keen to sell their products through or to such a large and powerful retailer. Several products, such as electronic products, can be sold in the market for some periods during their lifecycles before they retreat, except when they are not popular with consumers after been introduced. Therefore, in case of such products, the retailer should not just consider a single-period pricing and ordering policy. It should make dynamic pricing and ordering decisions based on market demand forecast, in order to obtain maximum cumulative profit from the product during its lifecycle. In this study, we consider this scenario and construct a two-period model to discuss pricing and ordering problems for a dominant retailer with demand uncertainty in a declining price environment. We show that the maximum expected profit function is continuous concave, so the optimal solution to pricing and ordering policy exists and it is the one and only. We also analyze sensitivity of retailer's expected profit to the effects of parameters of price-discount sharing scheme and market demand.     

制造商引入在线渠道的双渠道价格与服务竞争策略

为了削弱传统零售商在渠道博弈中的强势地位,制造商尝试引入直接在线渠道与传统零售商竞争。针对零售商价格领导权的渠道结构,本文在分析双渠道竞争时考虑了服务在战略决策中的价值,并将消费者区分为高服务偏好的消费者和低服务偏好的消费者。研究表明,仅当产品在线适合度足够高时,在零售商占主导权的渠道中,制造商引入在线渠道的战略效果才能实现,能导致制造商利润的增加,产品在线的适合度越高,利润提高越显著。当产品在线适合度足够高时,制造商引入在线渠道能够激励零售商提高服务质量,而且产品在线的适合度越高,服务质量提高越明显;在线渠道的引入能达到制造商和零售商双赢的效果;制造商利润和零售商利润都会随着高服务偏好消费者比例和服务的边际效用的提高而增加。     

考虑异质消费者的线下到线上供应链合作广告契约设计

本文针对一个拥有线上渠道的制造商和一个零售商组成的线下到线上(O2O)供应链,考虑渠道产品差异化策略下零售商为制造商线上渠道进行广告引流,刻画消费者对产品的异质性需求,分别设计对称信息和不对称信息下制造商的最优合作广告契约,通过对比两种情形中最优决策及利润的变化分析信息不对称的影响,并进一步探讨不对称信息下消费者渠道转换的麻烦成本、单位不匹配成本等重要参数对合作广告契约设计和供应链成员利润的影响。研究发现:不对称信息下,制造商可以策略性选择三种不同策略以最大化自身利润,其中不甄别零售商真实信息的混同均衡在某些条件下是制造商的最优策略;尽管信息不对称会给制造商带来利润损失,但制造商通过策略选择可缓和信息不对称的不利影响,某些条件下信息不对称并不损害供应链总体的利润;麻烦成本的变化会改变制造商不对称信息下最优合作广告契约的策略选择,某些条件下麻烦成本的增高对制造商利润反而存在正影响。最后,通过数值仿真对上述研究结果进行直观考察和说明。     

Optimal trade-in strategy of business-to-consumer platform with dual-format retailing model

B2C platforms are increasingly implementing trade-in programs to boost sales. Most of these platforms have adopted dual-format retailing model including both self-run stores and third-party stores. Under trade-in program framework, B2C platforms will determine the optimal trade-in rebate, and whether to offer the rebate to consumers with gift card (GC) or cash coupon (CC). GC can only be used in self-run stores, while CC can be used in both stores. To entice more consumers to trade-in products, platforms may launch trade-in efforts in the market. To address such decision-making challenges, we consider a B2C platform who owns a self-run store and hosts a third-party store, and examine the optimal trade-in strategy for the platform by developing four theoretical models. We first present two models without considering trade-in efforts, i.e., one model regarding GC payment, and one model regarding CC payment, and then extend them by taking trade-in efforts into consideration. Some interesting findings and insights are achieved. In particular, we find that both GC and CC do not always benefit the platform. Interestingly, offering high quality and low selling price for products in both the self-run store and the third-party store are also not always beneficial to the platform. So is the competition between both stores. Launching trade-in efforts may lead to a lower trade-in rebate but a higher profit for the platform. A counterintuitive finding is obtained that a higher gift card redemption rate is not beneficial to the platform, and vice versa.     

考虑策略性消费者的生鲜农产品定价和库存决策

消费者的策略性行为使零售商的生鲜农产品的定价和库存决策面临更大挑战。本文基于报童模型,综合考虑消费者的策略性行为,对生鲜农产品价值下降进行离散化处理。刻画策略性消费者的决策行为,构建零售商的单阶段和两阶段定价及库存决策模型,分析了产品价值剩余率对消费者行为、零售商最优定价、最优库存水平以及零售商利润的影响机理。研究发现,在单阶段模型中零售商最优价格和最优库存水平均随产品价值剩余率的递增而递增;而在两阶段模型中,第二阶段最优价格随价值剩余率的变化趋势可能存在阈值。     

Managing Slow‐Moving Perishables in the Grocery Industry

We address the value of information and value of centralized control in the context of a two‐echelon, serial supply chain with one retailer and one supplier that provide a single perishable product to consumers. Our analysis is relevant for managing slow‐moving perishable products with fixed lot sizes and expiration dates of a week or less. We evaluate two supply chain structures. In the first structure, referred to as decentralized information sharing, the retailer shares its demand, inventory, and ordering policy with the supplier, yet both facilities make their own profit‐maximizing replenishment decisions. In the second structure, centralized control, incentives are aligned and the replenishment decisions are coordinated. The latter supply chain structure corresponds to the industry practices of company‐owned stores or vendor‐managed inventory. We measure the value of information and value of centralized control as the marginal improvement in expected profits that a supply chain achieves relative to the case when no information is shared and decision making is decentralized. Key assumptions of our model include stochastic demand, lost sales, and fixed order quantities. We establish the importance of information sharing and centralized control in the supply chain and identify conditions under which benefits are realized. As opposed to previous work on the value of information, the major benefit in our setting is driven by the supplier's ability to provide the retailer with fresher product. By isolating the benefit by firm, we show that sharing information is not always Pareto‐improving for both supply chain partners in the decentralized setting.     

全渠道零售商退货方式和定价研究

本文以全渠道零售商不同渠道的定价为背景,以企业利润最大化为目标,以顾客退货给零售商带来的损失为出发点,从三种不同的退货方式分析退货损失对零售商不同渠道最优定价和利润的影响。首先分析传统的原渠道退货(即：从购买产品的渠道退货),然后分析所有顾客都通过线上渠道退货,进而分析所有顾客都通过线下渠道退货。研究表明：三种退货方式下,当零售商与顾客的线上单位产品净退货损失之和小于线下单位产品净退货损失之和时,全渠道零售商选择全部退货到线上渠道可获得最大利润;当零售商与顾客的线上单位产品净退货损失之和大于线下单位产品净退货损失之和时,全渠道零售商应选择全部退货到线下的退货方式以获得最大利润;传统的退货方式不会让零售商获得最大利润。本文研究对于全渠道零售虑顾客退货损失的基础上,设置最合理的退货方式和不同渠道之间的最优定价有一定的指导意义和实际应用价值。     

Manufacturer Rebate Competition in a Supply Chain with a Common Retailer

We consider manufacturer rebate competition in a supply chain with two competing manufacturers selling to a common retailer. We fully characterize the manufacturers’ equilibrium rebate decisions and show how they depend on parameters such as the fixed cost of a rebate program, market size, the redemption rate of rebate, the proportion of rebate‐sensitive consumers in the market and competition intensity. Interestingly, more intense competition induces a manufacturer to lower rebate value or stop offering rebate entirely. Without rebate, it is known that more intense competition hurts the manufacturers and benefits the retailer. With rebate, however, more intense competition could benefit the manufacturers and hurt the retailer. We find similar counterintuitive results when there is a change in some other parameters. We also consider the case when the retailer subsidizes the manufacturers sequentially to offer rebate programs. We fully characterize the retailer's optimal subsidy strategy, and show that subsidy always benefits the retailer but may benefit or hurt the manufacturers. When the retailer wants to induce both manufacturers to offer rebate, he always prefers to subsidize the manufacturer with a higher fixed cost first. Sometimes the other manufacturer will then voluntarily offer rebate even without subsidy.     

Optimal Policies for Recovering the Value of Consumer Returns

This study characterizes the class of Pareto optimal returns policies between a manufacturer and a retailer who receives consumer returns. The manufacturer may take a costly hidden action that reduces the expected number of products returned by consumers, which when realized is hidden information known only to the retailer. When faced with consumer returns, the retailer must decide whether to send the product back to the manufacturer, who harvests a low salvage value, or to engage in costly refurbishment that permits the returned product to be resold to consumers. We find that the optimal returns policies may be implemented through the payment by the manufacturer of a full refund to the retailer of the wholesale price for any returns as well as a bonus paid to the retailer that is decreasing in the number of returns to the manufacturer.     

Quality Provision with Heterogeneous Consumer Reservation Utilities

This study examines a firm's quality and price decisions when consumers differ not only in their willingness‐to‐pay for quality but also in their reservation utility for the basic product. We find that while the firm offers lower‐quality products when consumers' valuations for quality deteriorate, the optimal quality may increase with a negative shift in consumers' reservation utilities. We also investigate the optimal price and quality of the products within a vertically differentiated product line when the number of products is exogenously given. The existing literature shows that when consumers differ only in their willingness‐to‐pay for quality, the firm sets the efficient quality for consumers with the highest valuation for quality, whereas the concern for cannibalization pushes down the quality of inferior products. We find that when consumers are heterogeneous in both their reservation utility and valuation for quality, the concern for cannibalization may distort the quality upwards, even for consumers with the highest willingness‐to‐pay for quality. In addition, a low‐quality product may enjoy a higher profit margin than a high‐quality product within the product line.     

Implications for the Role of Retailers in Quality Assurance

We investigate a manufacturer–retailer channel to explore the role of a retailer in assuring the quality of a manufacturer's product as a quality gatekeeper. Such a gatekeeping activity can entail a reduction in the defective rate for consumers, if the retailer charges the manufacturer a penalty for each identified defect that is no smaller than the market penalty for an unidentified defect. As a result of the retailer's gatekeeping, the change in the negotiated wholesale price only depends on the manufacturer's individual benefit, whereas the change in the retailer's optimal retail price is associated with the channel‐wide benefit. When the impact of quality relative to retail price on demand is higher, the retailer benefits more from her gatekeeping activity, thus having a greater incentive to take on the quality gatekeeping responsibility. Moreover, the retailer's gatekeeping generates a larger increase in the demand as well as each firm's profit, when the retailer has a stronger relative bargaining power.     

Joint Pricing and Contingent Free-Shipping Decisions in B2C Transactions

We consider an online retailer's joint pricing and contingent free-shipping (CFS) decisions in both monopoly and duopoly structures, which is an important marketing-operations interface problem. We begin by investigating the impacts of a retailer's decisions on consumers' purchase behaviors, and show that the CFS strategy is useful to acquire the consumers with large order sizes. Then, we compute the probability of repeated purchases, and construct an expected profit function for an online retailer in the monopolistic setting. We find that the fixed shipping fees may have the largest impact on the retailer's profit among all shipping-related parameters, and the retailer can benefit more from homogeneous markets than from heterogeneous ones. Next, we consider the competition between two retailers in the duopoly structure, and analytically show that, if two retailers have identical fixed and variable shipping fees, then their equilibrium decisions are equal. In order to numerically find a Nash equilibrium for two retailers, we develop a simulation approach using Arena and OptQuest. Our simulation-based examples suggest that, as a result of the competition, the two retailers should decrease their profit margins but increase their CFS cutoff levels if they have the same fixed and also the same variable shipping fees.     

考虑残值变化和顾客异质性的零售商定价与库存决策

本文研究策略型消费者对零售商的定价和库存决策的影响。与以往的研究假设残值固定不变,且消费者均为策略型消费者不同的是,本文考虑了顾客的异质性以及残值由清仓期库存决定这一特点。本文的研究表明:在消费者均为策略型消费者,且清楚零售商将采取残值定价策略的情况下,零售商可以通过数量保证策略来提高自身的期望利润,降低库存订货量。在考虑顾客异质性的条件下,当零售商采取估值定价策略时,零售商的最大期望利润与短视型消费者在市场上的比例成正相关。并且,存在一个唯一的阈值点,当短视型消费者在市场上的比例高于这一阈值点时,估值定价策略优于保留价格定价策略,反之,则保留价格定价策略更优。     

The Interplay between Information Acquisition and Quality Disclosure

This study investigates the interactions between a manufacturer's information acquisition and quality disclosure strategies in a supply chain setting in which the manufacturer privately knows his product quality but is uncertain about consumer preferences. We argue that the manufacturer should treat his information acquisition and quality disclosure decisions as an integrated process because these decisions can significantly influence a retailer's rational inferences about product quality and can have conflicting effects on his own profitability. Although information acquisition helps a manufacturer subsequently craft better pricing and quality disclosure strategies, it also leaks certain product information to the retailer, thus helping the retailer better estimate product quality. Therefore, in equilibrium, a manufacturer may choose not to acquire any consumer information, even when such acquisition is costless. Moreover, we find that this adverse effect of acquisition is highly dependent on the cost of disclosure and consumers’ preference differentiation. Increased consumer preference differentiation may have a non‐monotonic relationship with the manufacturer's profit, and information acquisition can become detrimental to the manufacturer once the disclosure cost is sufficiently high.     

When Does a Retailer's Advance Selling Capability Benefit Manufacturer,Retailer, or Both?

Advance selling (AS) from a retailer to consumers is commonly observed in practice. With an AS capability, a retailer has the option to sell in advance or not. Having the AS option seems to increase flexibility and thus profit for a retailer. However, we show that the AS option can hurt the retailer's profit as well as supply chain performance. We identify two thresholds for a product's marginal production cost. A retailer's AS option benefits both the manufacturer and retailer when the marginal production cost is high, that is, above both thresholds. It benefits the manufacturer but hurts the retailer when the marginal production cost is moderate, that is, between the two thresholds. The result is ambiguous when the marginal production cost is low, that is, below both thresholds. We find that consumer valuation uncertainty under AS is the key driving force for the surprising result that having the retailer's AS option can hurt the retailer. When compared to the scenario where the retailer does not have the AS option, we find that the manufacturer's optimal wholesale price weakly decreases under the retailer's AS option if the marginal production cost is high. The statement is reversed if the marginal production cost is moderate or low.     

考虑策略型消费者行为的零售商订货及忠诚计划联合决策研究

顾客忠诚计划是零售商的重要销售策略之一. 本文针对两期折扣问题中零售商的订货和积分回馈计划投入的联合决策问题,基于完全理性假设,并结合问题的实际情况,考虑了全价期单期以及全价期和折扣期两期的积分回馈计划,构建了基于这两种积分回馈计划下的策略型消费者决策模型. 分析了不同积分回馈计划对策略型消费者行为的影响,进而讨论了零售商在不同决策下的收益情况,探索了零售商订货和积分回馈计划联合决策的制定. 研究发现：(1)积分回馈计划会对策略型消费者行为产生影响,从而影响零售商的决策和收益;(2)订货和忠诚计划制定的联合决策有利于零售商提高收益;(3)对于单位成本低的商品,面向全价期的积分回馈计划的最优收益提升较大;(4)对于商品价值与实际价格差异较小的商品,积分回馈计划对最优收益的提升作用较大. 具体而言,如果商品单位成本小于等于折扣价,则面向全价期的积分回馈计划的最优收益提升较大,反之,则面向全价期和折扣期的积分回馈计划的最优收益提升较大.     

基于期权的易逝品订购预售联合策略研究

由需求不确定所引起的库存过剩或产品脱销通常会给企业的正常运营带来极大风险，本文考虑一种运输时间影响损耗率的易逝品，在消费者估值不确定的情况下，从集成的角度出发，针对零售商的订购与预售联合策略展开研究。需求端零售商可通过批发价订购方式或组合订购方式采购易逝品，销售端可提供折扣预售和期权预售两种策略。通过模型构建详细分析了几种不同的订购预售联合策略，求解了不同策略下的最优订购量和最优预售价格以及不同策略的适用情形。研究发现柔性采购（组合订购方式）和期权预售联合决策可以有效降低需求波动带来的库存积压和产品短缺风险，且期权预售策略比折扣预售策略的应用范围更广。