Strategic interactions in traditional franchise systems: Are franchisors always better off?

The effects of price competition and advertising spillover on franchisees’ decision to cooperate and on franchisor’s contractual preferences are investigated. We show that the franchisees’ decision to cooperate or not depends on the type of franchise contracts. Under exclusive territory contracts, any mode of play between franchisees give the same profits to the franchisees and franchisor. Contracts that allow price competition and well targeted local advertising offer a good ground for horizontal cooperation, which may or may not benefit the franchisor depending on whether the prices are strategic substitutes or strategic complements. Contracts in which price competition is allowed and the burden of advertising decisions is totally transferred to the franchisor lead to cooperation between franchisees at the expense of the franchisor. Franchisees do not cooperate to the benefit of the franchisor if local advertising is predatory and price competition is not allowed in the contract, but franchisees are given the responsibility to undertake local advertising. Also, the franchisor endorses cooperation between franchisees when local advertising has a public good nature, but such a cooperation may never occur when the impact of local advertising on demand is significant. We finally show that while some contracts always dominate others, the choice of a franchise contract may also depend on local competition and/or the franchise goodwill.     

Modelling Cooperative Advertising Decisions in Franchising

Advertising fee decisions in franchise systems are a frequent source of conflict between franchisors and franchisees. Such disagreements persist because the win-win potential of vertical cooperative advertising is not well appreciated. Our paper introduces a formal normative approach for analyzing, understanding and subsequently making these vertical cooperative advertising decisions within a franchising context in a manner that results in optimal system-wide returns. The model demonstrates that cooperative determination of franchisor's and franchisee's advertising contributions may yield superior payoffs for both exchange partners than the total payoff if the franchisor and franchisee seek to optimize their individual objective functions. Three types of models are developed and evaluated (i.e. deterministic, stochastic and under conditions of differing perceptions of the sales response functions to advertising). Conclusions hold under all three model variants. Industry implications are also presented.     

A dynamic model for advertising and pricing competition between national and store brands

We study the relationship between the pricing and advertising decisions in a channel where a national brand is competing with a private label. We consider a differential game that incorporates the carryover effects of brand advertising over time for both the manufacturer and the retailer and we account for the complementary and competitive roles of advertising. Analysis of the obtained equilibrium Markov strategies shows that the relationship between advertising and pricing decisions in the channel depends mainly on the nature of the advertising effects. In particular, the manufacturer reacts to higher competitive retailer’s advertising levels by offering price concessions and limiting his advertising expenditures. The retailer’s optimal reaction to competitive advertising effects in the channel depends on two factors: (1) the price competition level between the store and the national brands and (2) the strength of the competitive advertising effects. For example, in case of intense price competition between the two brands combined with a strong manufacturer’s competitive advertising effect, the retailer should lower both the store and the national brands’ prices as a reaction to higher manufacturer’s advertising levels. For the retailer, the main advantage from boosting his competitive advertising investments seems to be driven by increased revenues from the private label. The retailer should however limit his investments in advertising if the latter generates considerable competitive effects on the national brand’s sales.     

Coordinating advertising and pricing in a manufacturer–retailer channel

Cooperative advertising is a practice that a manufacturer pays retailers a portion of the local advertising cost in order to induce sales. Cooperative advertising plays a significant role in marketing programs of channel members. Nevertheless, most studies to date on cooperative advertising have assumed that the market demand is only influenced by advertising expenditures but not by retail price. This paper addresses channel coordination by seeking optimal cooperative advertising strategies and equilibrium pricing in a two-member distribution channel. We establish and compare two models: a non-cooperative, leader–follower game and a cooperative game. We develop propositions and insights from the comparison of these models. The cooperative model achieves better coordination by generating higher channel-wide profits than the non-cooperative model with these features: (a) the retailer price is lower to consumers; and (b) the advertising efforts are higher for all channel members. We identify the feasible solutions to a bargaining problem where the channel members can determine how to divide the extra profits.     

Vertical cooperative advertising and pricing decisions in a manufacturer–retailer supply chain: A game-theoretic approach

Manufacturers can increase the advertising expenditures of their retailers by bearing a fraction of the occurring costs within the framework of a vertical cooperative advertising program. We expand the existing research which deals with advertising and pricing decisions in a manufacturer–retailer supply chain contemporaneously. By means of game theory, four different relationships between the channel members are considered: Firstly, three non-cooperative games with either symmetrical distribution of power or asymmetrical distribution with one player being the leader in each case, and one cooperative game where both players tend to maximize the total profit. The latter is complemented by a bargaining model, which proposes a fair split of profit on the basis of the players’ risk attitude and bargaining power. Our main findings are as follows: (a) In contrast to previous analyses, we do not limit the ratio between manufacturer’s and retailer’s margin, which provides more general insights into the effects of the underlying distribution of power within the channel. (b) The highest total profit is gained when both players cooperate. This behavior puts also the customers in a better position, as it produces the lowest retail price as well as the highest advertising expenditures compared to the other configurations.     

Pricing and advertisement in a manufacturer–retailer supply chain

We use a game theoretical approach to study pricing and advertisement decisions in a manufacturer–retailer supply chain when price discounts are offered by both the manufacturer and retailer. When the manufacturer is the leader of the game, we obtained Stackelberg equilibrium with manufacturer’s local allowance, national brand name investment, manufacturer’s preferred price discount, retailer’s price discount, and local advertising expense. For the special case of two-stage equilibrium when the manufacturer’s price discount is exogenous, we found that the retailer is willing to increase local advertising expense if the manufacturer increases local advertising allowance and provides deeper price discount, or if the manufacturer decreases its brand name investment. When both the manufacturer and retailer have power, Nash equilibrium in a competition game is obtained. The comparison between the Nash equilibrium and Stackelberg equilibrium shows that the manufacturer always prefers Stackelberg equilibrium, but there is no definitive conclusion for the retailer. The bargaining power can be used to determine the profit sharing between the manufacturer and the retailer. Once the profit sharing is determined, we suggest a simple contract to help the manufacturer and retailer obtain their desired profit sharing.     

Cooperative advertising in a distribution channel with fairness concerns

Cooperative (co-op) advertising has been widely used in practice and employed as a strategy to improve the performance of a distribution channel. It is known from the existing models that co-op advertising could not achieve the channel coordination (i.e., maximize the total channel profit). In this paper, we consider a distribution channel consisting of a single manufacturer and a single retailer, and investigate the effect of the retailer’s fairness concerns. Applying the equilibrium analysis, we obtain the following results: (1) Channel coordination can be achieved if the retailer has fairness concerns and model parameters satisfy certain conditions. (2) Although both channel members become better off with co-op advertising if neither channel member has fairness concerns, we find situations where co-op advertising brings detrimental effects to the retailer if the retailer has fairness concerns. (3) The retailer’s fairness concerns may increase or decrease the equilibrium participation rate, the equilibrium advertising effort, and the equilibrium profit of the manufacturer and the whole channel. (4) We identify the conditions under which the effectiveness of co-op advertising can be improved or reduced by the retailer’s fairness concerns. As long as co-op advertising can bring extra profit to the manufacturer, the retailer’s fairness concerns could improve the effectiveness of the co-op advertising. (5) There exists a Pareto improvement for the profits of both the manufacturer and the retailer when a retailer without fairness concerns becomes fair-minded.     

Stackelberg equilibria in managerial delegation games

Managerial compensation packages do not only influence managers’ behavior, but also have an impact on competing firms. In a managerial delegation game investigating the latter aspect, it is shown that the inherent prisoner’s dilemma situation can be resolved (without changing the normally studied setup or timing). In the first stage, owners choose an incentive function for their managers, in the second stage they choose the weights assigned to that function besides profits and in the third stage managers play a Cournot game. Solving this continuous optimization problem with the implicit function theorem shows that choosing an incentive from the set of “multiplicative incentives”, i.e. any generalized affine transformation of the product of both firms’ quantities, which includes e.g. relative profit, ensures that the Stackelberg outcome is among the set of equilibrium outcomes. Furthermore, it is the unique outcome if the rival owner opts for one of the well-known incentives like sales, revenue or market share. The general approach used allows demonstrating that with no other linear incentive a Stackelberg outcome results and that incentives like profit-to-cost ratio should be avoided. Selecting a multiplicative incentive is a dominant strategy of the game.     

Nash game model for optimizing market strategies,configuration of platform products in a Vendor Managed Inventory (VMI) supply chain for a product family

This paper discusses how a manufacturer and its retailers interact with each other to optimize their product marketing strategies, platform product configuration and inventory policies in a VMI (Vendor Managed Inventory) supply chain. The manufacturer procures raw materials from multiple suppliers to produce a family of products sold to multiple retailers. Multiple types of products are substitutable each other to end customers. The manufacturer makes its decision on raw materials’ procurement, platform product configuration, product replenishment policies to retailers with VMI, price discount rate, and advertising investment to maximize its profit. Retailers in turn consider the optimal local advertising investments and retail prices to maximize their profits. This problem is modeled as a dual simultaneous non-cooperative game (as a dual Nash game) model with two sub-games. One is between the retailers serving in competing retail markets and the other is between the manufacturer and the retailers. This paper combines analytical, iterative and GA (genetic algorithm) methods to develop a game solution algorithm to find the Nash equilibrium. A numerical example is conducted to test the proposed model and algorithm, and gain managerial implications.     

基于电商平台的供应链广告决策和分销模式研究

本文建立包含一个制造商和一个电商平台的序贯博弈模型,讨论分销模式对供应链成员广告决策和收益的影响。电商平台中存在两种分销模式:批发模式下制造商将产品卖给平台,平台再进行零售;平台模式下制造商通过平台直接销售产品。另外,制造商和平台都可以选择是否参与广告活动并决定各自的广告投入。研究发现:两种分销模式下供应链成员都应参与广告活动;与批发模式相比,平台模式下制造商广告投入增加而平台广告投入降低。平台佣金率增加一定减小制造商的收益,但只有当制造商的广告效果或平台佣金率较小时,才会增加平台的收益。两种分销模式下供应链的总收益都低于纵向整合供应链的总收益;当平台佣金率适中时,制造商选择平台模式可以实现帕累托改进。     

A Multiobjective Approach to Design Franchise Outlet Networks

The economic goals and the resulting locational objectives of a franchisor and its individual franchisees are frequently in conflict. For example, one goal of the franchisor is to maximize system-wide market coverage, while the corresponding goal of the franchisee is to maximize his or her individual market share. Consequently, the optimal facility siting scheme from one perspective may be suboptimal from the other. That is, the facility siting scheme which maximizes system-wide coverage will not necessarily maximize the market shares of the individual franchises which make up the system. In this paper we introduce a multiobjective integer programming model to design franchise networks. The model selects franchise locations and identifies individual franchise market areas. Constraints in the formulation guarantee that all franchise locations are assigned at least a minimal threshold market area with sufficient demand to ensure economic survival. An underlying assumption of the model is that a rationing mechanism exists to assign demand to various franchise locations. Consequently, the model is most appropriate for service delivery franchises in which the franchisor can define and enforce exclusive franchise territories for the various franchise outlets. The purpose of this model is to generate alternative siting configurations which demonstrate the inherent trade-offs between the objectives of the franchisor and the individual franchisees. Given these various location alternatives, it is expected that the franchisor will then evaluate them in terms of other criteria such as the likelihood of the individual franchisee's success, pricing strategies for the various sites, total costs, total profit, and the effects of the response of competitors. Consequently, the proposed model should be viewed as an aid for one aspect of the decision process, i.e. the generation of alternative courses of action.     

Marketing-driven channel coordination with revenue-sharing contracts under price promotion to end-customers

This paper explores the equilibrium behavior of a basic supplier-retailer distribution channel with and without revenue-sharing contracts under price promotion to end-customers. Three types of promotional demand patterns characterized by different features of dynamic price sensitivity are considered to rationalize price promotional effects on end-customer demands. Under such a retail price promotion scheme, this work develops a basic model to investigate decentralized channel members’ equilibrium decisions in pricing and logistics operations using a two-stage Stackelberg game approach. Extending from the basic model, this work further derives the equilibrium solutions of the dyadic members under channel coordination with revenue-sharing contracts. Analytical results show that under certain conditions both the supplier and retailer can gain more profits through revenue-sharing contracts by means of appropriate promotional pricing strategies. Moreover, the supplier should provide additional economic incentives to the retailer. Furthermore, a counter-profit revenue-sharing chain effect is found in the illustrative examples. Such a phenomenon infers that the more the retailer requests to share from a unit of sale the more it may lose under the revenue-sharing supply chain coordination scheme.     

A Stackelberg game and its improvement in a VMI system with a manufacturing vendor

Vendor managed inventory (VMI) is an inventory management strategy to let a vendor manage his retailers’ inventories, which makes the vendor have the opportunity to obtain some inventory and market-related information of his retailers. This paper discusses how the vendor can take advantage of this information for increasing his own profit by using a Stackelberg game in a VMI system. The vendor here is a manufacturer who procures raw materials to produce a finished product and supplies it at the same wholesale price to multiple retailers. The retailers then sell the product in independent markets at retail prices. Solution procedures are developed to find the Stackelberg game equilibrium that each enterprise is not willing to deviate from for maximizing his own profit. The equilibrium makes the manufacturer benefited, and the retailers’ profits maximized. The equilibrium can then be improved for further benefiting the manufacturer and his retailers if the retailers are willing to cooperate with the manufacturer by using a cooperative contract. Finally, a numerical example and the corresponding sensitivity analysis are given to illustrate that: (1) the manufacturer can benefit from his leadership, and monopolize the added profit of the VMI system in some cases; (2) The manufacturer can further improve his own profit, and then the retailers’ profits by the cooperative contract, as compared to the Stackelberg equilibrium; (3) market and raw material related parameters have significant influence on every enterprise’s net profit.     

Consumer environmental awareness and competition in two-stage supply chains

This paper focuses on the impact of competition and consumers’ environmental awareness on key supply chain players. We consider both the production competition between partially substitutable products made by different manufacturers, and the competition between retail stores. We use two-stage Stackelberg game models to investigate the dynamics between the supply chain players given three supply chain network structures. We find that as consumers’ environmental awareness increases, retailers and manufacturers with superior eco-friendly operations will benefit; while the profitability of the inferior eco-friendly firm will tend to increase if the production competition level is low, and will tend to decrease if the production competition level is high. In addition, higher levels of retail competition may make manufacturers with inferior eco-friendly operations more likely to benefit from the increase of consumers’ environmental awareness. Moreover, as production competition intensifies, the profits of the retailers will always increase, while the profits of the manufacturers with inferior eco-friendly operations will always decrease. The profitability of the manufacturers with superior eco-friendly operations will also tend to decrease, unless consumers’ environmental awareness is high and the superior manufacturer has a significant cost advantage related to product environmental improvement.     

Positioning of new brands in an experiment

This paper deals with an experimental investigation of positioning new brands. For this purpose, a management game was carried out with students. The brands introduced in the cause of the game were analysed in respect to their positions in a two-dimensional feature space. We try to find out which of the two strategies, niche policy and imitation, is more frequently used in complex decision situations and if there is a difference in profits. Furthermore, we want to find out, whether differences of prices and advertising exist in our experiment depending on the positioning strategy used.     

Lead-time hedging and coordination between manufacturing and sales departments using Nash and Stackelberg games

In a firm, potential conflict exists between manufacturing and sales departments. Salespersons prefer to order from manufacturing departments in advance so that they can secure products in the amount they need to satisfy customers in time. This time in advance strategy is defined as “lead-time hedging.” While this hedging strategy is good for the sales department to guarantee the right quantity at the right time for customers, it adds additional costs and pressure to the manufacturing department. One scheme to resolve this conflict is to introduce a fair “internal price,” charged by the manufacturing department to the sales department. In this paper, two models involving a fair internal price are introduced. In one model, a Nash game is played to reach an optimal strategy for both parties. In the other model, a Stackelberg game is played in which the manufacturing department serves as the leader. We show that these two models can successfully reduce lead-time hedging determined by the salesperson and can increase the firm’s overall profit, as compared to the traditional model without considering the internal price. More insights have also been analyzed that include the comparisons of the manufacturer’s and the salesperson’s profits among the traditional model, the Nash game model, the Stackelberg game model, and the centralized global optimization model.     

Two-player simultaneous location game: Preferential rights and overbidding

Competitive location problems can be characterized by the fact that the decisions made by others will affect our own payoffs. In this paper, we address a discrete competitive location game in which two decision-makers have to decide simultaneously where to locate their services without knowing the decisions of one another. This problem arises in a franchising environment in which the decision-makers are the franchisees and the franchiser defines the potential sites for locating services and the rules of the game. At most one service can be located at each site, and one of the franchisees has preferential rights over the other. This means that if both franchisees are interested in opening the service in the same site, only the one that has preferential rights will open it. We consider that both franchisees have budget constraints, but the franchisee without preferential rights is allowed to show interest in more sites than the ones she can afford. We are interested in studying the influence of the existence of preferential rights and overbidding on the outcomes for both franchisees and franchiser. A model is presented and an algorithmic approach is developed for the calculation of Nash equilibria. Several computational experiments are defined and their results are analysed, showing that preferential rights give its holder a relative advantage over the other competitor. The possibility of overbidding seems to be advantageous for the franchiser, as well as the inclusion of some level of asymmetry between the two decision-makers.     

The multi-item newsvendor model with cross-selling and the solution when demand is jointly normally distributed

Products are often demanded in tandem because of the cross-selling effect. The demand for an item can increase if sales of its cross-selling-associated items are achieved or decrease when the associated items are out of stock, resulting in lost sales. Therefore, a joint inventory policy should be pursued in a cross-selling system. This paper introduces customer-driven cross-selling into centralized and competitive newsvendor (NV) models by representing an item’s effective demand as a function of other items’ order quantities. We derive first-order optimality conditions for the centralized model in addition to pure-strategy Nash equilibrium conditions and uniqueness conditions of the equilibria for the competitive model. We further develop gradient-based (GB) and iteration-based (IB) algorithms to solve the centralized and competitive models, respectively. A computational study verifies the effectiveness of the proposed algorithms. The computational results show that a larger cross-selling effect leads to a larger order quantity in a centralized NV model but a smaller order quantity in a competitive NV model, and a larger positive correlation between items’ demands leads to higher profits with smaller order quantities in both models. Moreover, NVs will order more items if the demand variance is greater, however resulting in lower profits. In a competitive situation, one will prefer smaller order quantities than in a centralized decision situation.     

基于演化博弈视角下的加盟式快递合作稳定性分析

针对我国加盟式快递企业逐渐暴露出的加盟商服务质量低下、各自为政、总部管理薄弱等引发的双方合作不稳定问题, 本研究以演化博弈模型为主要理论工具, 开发了不完全信息下快递公司总部和加盟商的行为交互演化博弈系统。通过雅克比矩阵求解, 揭示了博弈初始条件改变以及决策参数取值变动对演化稳定结果的影响;然后以申通公司为例, 采用MATLAB软件进行了数值仿真分析。研究表明, 当加盟商积极合作所增加的收益、快递公司总部的罚金、信息不对称程度和监督成本位于不同阈值区间时, 系统分别呈现出三种演化稳定结果和一种周期性的随机状态, 同时发现快递单价对促进博弈双方的合作稳定性具有积极作用。最后, ①降低快递加盟商服务成本, 提高服务质量;②建立适度的违约惩罚制度, 完善利润分配机制;③加强平台信息共享, 促进信息透明化;④营造良好的竞争氛围, 避免无谓的价格战, 有助于引导系统向理想状态演化。     

Optimal Advertising and Pricing in a Dynamic Durable Goods Supply Chain

Cooperative advertising is an incentive offered by a manufacturer to influence retailers’ promotional decisions. We study a dynamic durable goods duopoly with a manufacturer and two independent and competing retailers. The manufacturer, as a Stackelberg leader, announces his wholesale prices and his shares of retailers’ advertising costs, and the retailers in response play a Nash differential game in choosing their optimal retail prices and advertising efforts over time. We obtain the feedback equilibrium policies for the manufacturer and the retailers in explicit form for a linear demand formulation. We investigate issues, like channel coordination and antidiscriminatory legislation, and also study a case, when the manufacturer sells through only one retailer and the second retailer sells a competing brand.