不同决策目标下受资金约束零售商的最优采购策略研究

在提前订购和延时采购两种情景下,分别考虑最大化期望收益和最小化违约概率两种决策目标,对受资金约束零售商的最优采购量和相匹配的融资策略进行分析,结果表明,相比于以最大化期望收益为决策目标,以最小化违约概率为决策目标的零售商在提前订购中将奉行"保守"的采购量和融资策略（仅耗尽自有资金量采购而不融资）,而在延时采购中采取"激进"的采购量和融资策略（与最大化期望收益下一致）;在此基础上,对不同决策目标下受资金约束零售商的最优采购时机问题进行研究发现,在最大化期望收益下,零售商的最优采购时机由产品采购成本、市场容量均值、市场容量方差、自有资金量、银行贷款利率等多个参数共同决定,而在最小化违约概率下,零售商将始终选择延时采购。

Optimal Purchasing Policies of Capital-constrained Retailers under Different Decision-making Objectives

In recent years, the interfaces of enterprises' operational and financial decisions have received substantial attentions in academia. Among them, the "capital-constrained newsvendor" (CCNV) problem which focuses on studying the impacts of liquidity constraints on retailers' inventory policies is widely concerned. With a random price-dependent market demand, the capital-constrained retailer's integrated purchase timing, quantity, and financing decisions under two different decision-making objectives, i.e. expected-profit-maximizing and default-rate-minimizing, are respectively studied.The simplest supply chain structure comprising one supplier and one retailer is examined. The retailer is assumed to be capital-constrained (its internal capital is not enough to afford the optimal orders), but it can borrow from banks to fulfill its purchasing. The supplier offers two purchase time windows to the retailer, i.e. "early-purchasing during the lead time with a lower price but high demand uncertainty" and "late-purchasing at the beginning of the selling season with a higher price but no demand uncertainty". In each purchase time window, the retailer's optimal purchase quantity and the corresponding financing policies are studied under two different decision-making objectives respectively. On this basis, the optimal purchase timing policies are investigated under each objective and the differences between the policies are highlighted. Some main conclusions of this research are summarized as follows.(a) In the case of early-purchasing, the retailer's optimal purchase quantity and corresponding financing policies are different under two proposed decision-making objectives, while its policies under these objectives are the same in the case of late-purchasing. Furthermore, a default-rate-minimizing objective may induce some loss of expected profit in early-purchasing and the loss is decreasing with the retailer's internal capital level.(b) Under an expected-profit-maximizing objective, the retailer can conditionally obtain an "information bonus" in late-purchasing, while it will bear a higher wholesale price. Thus, it needs a trade-off between the "conditional information bonus" and the "inevitable cost loss" in late-purchasing, and then makes the optimal purchase timing decision. A multi-parameter based method is proposed to solve the timing decision problem. On the other hand, under a default-rate-minimizing objective, the retailer's timing decision is indifferent since it can always achieve a zero default rate by performing appropriate quantity strategies in both purchase time windows.