The role of retailer’s performance in optimal wholesale price discount policies

The main goal of this paper is to model the effects of wholesale price control on manufacturer’s profit, taking explicitly into account the retailer’s sales motivation and performance. We consider a stylized distribution channel where a manufacturer sells a single kind of good to a single retailer. Wholesale price discounts are assumed to increase the retailer’s motivation thus improving sales. We study the manufacturer’s profit maximization problem as an optimal control model where the manufacturer’s control is the discount on wholesale price and retailer’s motivation is one of the state variables. In particular in the paper we prove that an increasing discount policy is optimal for the manufacturer when the retailer is not efficient while efficient retailers may require to decrease the trade discounts at the end of the selling period. Computational experiments point out how the discount on wholesale price passed by the retailer to the market (pass-through) influences the optimal profit of the manufacturer.     

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.     

Product variety and channel structure strategy for a retailer-Stackelberg supply chain

Motivated by the observations that the direct sales channel is increasingly used for customized products and that retailers wield leadership, we develop in this paper a retailer-Stackelberg pricing model to investigate the product variety and channel structure strategies of manufacturer in a circular spatial market. To avoid channel conflict, we consider the commonly observed case where the indirect channel sells standard products whereas the direct channel offers custom products. Our analytical results indicate that if the reservation price in the indirect channel is sufficiently low, adding the direct channel raises the unit wholesale price and retail price in the indirect channel due to customization in the direct channel. Despite the fact that dual channels for the retailer may dominate the single indirect channel, we find that the motivation for the manufacturer to use dual channels decreases with the unit production cost, while increases with (i) the marginal cost of variety, (ii) the retailer’s marginal selling cost, and (iii) the customer’s fit cost. Interestingly, our equilibrium analysis demonstrates that it is more likely for the manufacturer to use dual channels under the retailer Stackelberg channel leadership scenario than under the manufacturer Stackelberg scenario if offering a greater variety is very expensive. When offering a greater variety is inexpensive, the decentralization of the indirect channel may invert the manufacturer’s channel structure decision. Furthermore, endogenization of product variety will also invert the channel structure decision if the standard product’s reservation price is sufficiently low.     

Pricing policies for substitutable products in a supply chain with Internet and traditional channels

This study considers pricing policies in a supply chain with one manufacturer, who sells a product to an independent retailer and directly to consumers through an Internet channel. In addition to the manufacturer’s product, the retailer sells a substitute product produced by another manufacturer. Given the wholesale prices of the two substitute products, the manufacturer decides the retail price of the Internet channel, and the retailer decides the retail prices of the two substitute products. Both the manufacturer and the retailer choose their own decision variables to maximize their respective profits. This work formulates the price competition, using the settings of Nash and Stackelberg games, and derives the corresponding existence and uniqueness conditions for equilibrium solutions. A sensitivity analysis of an equilibrium solution is then conducted for the model parameters, and the profits are compared for two game settings. The findings show that improving brand loyalty is profitable for both of the manufacturer and retailer, and that an increased service value may alleviate the threat of the Internet channel for the retailer and increase the manufacturer’s profit. The study also derives some conditions under which the manufacturer and the retailer mutually prefer the Stackelberg game. Based on these results, this study proposes an appropriate cooperation strategy for the manufacturer and retailer.     

Selling to the “Newsvendor” with a forecast update: Analysis of a dual purchase contract

We consider a supply chain in which a manufacturer sells to a procure-to-stock retailer facing a newsvendor problem with a forecast update. Under a wholesale price contract, the retailer waits as long as she can and optimally places her order after observing the forecast update. We show that the retailer’s wait-and-decide strategy, induced by the wholesale price contract, hinders the manufacturer’s ability to (1) set the wholesale price and maximize his profit, (2) hedge against excess inventory risk, and (3) reduce his profit uncertainty. To mitigate the adverse effect of wholesale price contract, we propose the dual purchase contract, through which the manufacturer provides a discount for orders placed before the forecast update. We characterize how and when a dual purchase contract creates strict Pareto improvement over a wholesale price contract. To do so, we establish the retailer’s optimal ordering policy and the manufacturer’s optimal pricing and production policies. We show how the dual purchase contract reduces profit variability and how it can be used as a risk hedging tool for a risk averse manufacturer. Through a numerical study, we provide additional managerial insights and show, for example, that market uncertainty is a key factor that defines when the dual purchase contract provides strict Pareto improvement over the wholesale price contract.     

Price and lead time decisions in dual-channel supply chains

Manufacturers today are increasingly adopting a dual channel to sell their products, i.e., the traditional retail channel and an online direct channel. Empirical studies have shown that service quality (we focus on the delivery lead time of the direct channel) even goes beyond product price as one of the major factors influencing consumer acceptance of the direct channel. Delivery lead time has significant effects on demand, profit, and pricing strategy. However, there is scant literature addressing the decision on the promised delivery lead time of a direct channel and its impact on the manufacturer’s and retailer’s pricing decisions. To fill this gap, we examine the optimal decisions of delivery lead time and prices in a centralized and a decentralized dual-channel supply chain using the two-stage optimization technique and Stackelberg game, and analyze the impacts of delivery lead time and customer acceptance of a direct channel on the manufacturer’s and retailer’s pricing behaviours. We analytically show that delivery lead time strongly influences the manufacturer’s and the retailer’s pricing strategies and profits. Our numerical studies reveal that the difference between the demand transfer ratios in the two channels with respect to delivery lead time and direct sale price, customer acceptance of the direct channel, and product type have great effects on the lead time and pricing decisions.     

Joint pricing-servicing decision and channel strategies in the supply chain

This paper investigates the equilibrium behavior of a two-echelon supply chain in four channel strategies: (i) vertical integration, (ii) vertical Nash (iii) manufacturer’s Stackelberg and (vi) retailer’s Stackelberg. We examine the price and service level decision for each of the above four channel strategies in two cases: (i) Simultaneous service-level decision: Here, the manufacturer and retailer simultaneously choose a service level. (ii) Sequentially service-level decision: Here, the manufacturer and retailer sequentially choose a service level. We model the demand as a deterministic linear function of retailer’s price and both manufacturer’s and retailer’s service levels. We discuss the optimal configuration from each individual’s perspective for each of the above channel strategies. We show that vertical integration dominates other strategies and leads to the highest service level but lowest retail price among various channel coordination policies considered here. We yield several conclusions about the provision of service level by each supply chain individual to coordinate the channel.     

Using MSRP to enhance the ability of rebates to control distribution channels

Manufacturers have increasingly instituted widespread mail-in rebate programs in recent years. Two primary purposes for rebates are to: (1) more directly impact consumer demand by reducing net retail price, and (2) capitalize on consumers’ slippage behavior because not all consumers who intend to redeem the rebate at purchase time end up actually redeeming it. However, retailers can counteract the power of rebates to impact demand by simply raising the retail price by the amount of the manufacturer’s rebate. We show that by combining a manufacturer’s suggested retail price (MSRP) along with a rebate, the manufacturer can better control the channel by inhibiting the retailer’s ability to raise price, particularly when consumers exhibit loss aversion. As a result, incorporating MSRP with a rebate promotion plan increases the manufacturer’s profit. More surprisingly, the profit of the supply chain as a whole also increases, and the channel efficiency increases as well. In fact, contrary to results from the existing rebate literature suggesting that rebates should always be offered whenever slippage exists, we demonstrate that MSRP can actually be a more effective tool than rebates in managing retailer and consumer behavior when consumers do not have sufficient loss aversion and the slippage rate is low enough.     

Launching new products through exclusive sales channels

When launching a new product, a manufacturer usually sells it through competing retailers under non-exclusive arrangements. Recently, many new products (cellphones, electronics, toys, etc.) are sold through a single sales channel via an exclusive arrangement. In this paper we present two separate models that examine these two arrangements. Each model is based on a Stackelberg game in which the manufacturer acts as the leader by setting the wholesale price and the retailers act as the followers by choosing their retail prices. For each model, we solve the Stackelberg game by determining the manufacturer’s optimal wholesale price and each retailer’s optimal retail price in equilibrium. Then we examine the conditions under which the manufacturer should sell the new product through an exclusive retailer. In addition, we examine the impact of postponing the wholesale price decision and the impact of demand uncertainty on the manufacturer’s optimal profit under both arrangements.     

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.     

Make-or-buy service capacity decision in a supply chain providing after-sales service

We consider a supply chain comprising a manufacturer and a retailer. The manufacturer supplies a product to the retailer, while the retailer sells the product bundled with after-sales service to consumers in a fully competitive market. The sales volume is affected by the retailer’s service-level commitment. The retailer can build service capacity in-house at a deterministic price before service demand is realized, or buy the service from an outsourcing market at an uncertain price after service demand realization. We find that the outsourcing market encourages the retailer to make a higher level of service commitment, while prompting the manufacturer to reduce the wholesale price, resulting in more demand realization. We analyze how the expected cost of the service in the outsourcing market and the retailer’s risk attitude affect the decisions of both parties. We derive the conditions under which the retailer is willing to build service capacity in-house and under which it will buy the service from the outsourcing market. Moreover, we find that the manufacturer’s sharing with the retailer the cost to build service capacity improves the profits of both parties.     

Inventory competition and allocation in a multi-channel distribution system

Consider a supply chain involving one manufacturer and one independent retailer. The manufacturer distributes her product to the end consumer through the independent retailer as well as through her direct channel. Each of the two channels faces a stochastic demand. If one channel is out of stock, a fraction of the unsatisfied customers visit the other channel, which induces inventory competition between the channels. Under the scenario described above, will the manufacturer ever undercut the retailer’s order when the capacity is infinite? What are the equilibria of the game? How does a capacity constraint affect the equilibrium outcome? What is the optimal inventory allocation strategy for the manufacturer? Using a game theoretic model we seek answers to the above questions. Both the capacitated and the infinite capacity games are considered. We establish the necessary condition for a manufacturer to undercut a retailer’s order and show that a manufacturer may deny the retailer of inventory even when the capacity is ample. We show that there can be an equilibrium in the capacitated game where a manufacturer might not use the entire capacity and still deny a retailer inventory. We also show that a mild capacity constraint may make both parties better off and thereby increase the total supply chain profit. We develop a simple yet practical contract called the reverse revenue sharing contract and show that along with a fixed franchise fee this contract can coordinates our decentralized supply chain.     

Sales effort free riding and coordination with price match and channel rebate

This paper studies sales effort coordination for a supply chain with one manufacturer and two retail channels, where an online retailer offers a lower price and free-rides a brick-and-mortar retailer’s sales effort. The free riding effect reduces brick-and-mortar retailer’s desired effort level, and thus hurts the manufacturer’s profit and the overall supply chain performance. To achieve sales effort coordination, we designed a contract with price match and selective compensation rebate. We also examined other contracts, including the target rebate contract and the wholesale price discount contract, both with price match. The numerical analysis shows that the selective rebate outperforms other contracts in coordinating the brick-and-mortar retailer’s sales effort and improving supply chain efficiency.     

Qualifying for a government’s scrappage program to stimulate consumers’ trade-in transactions? Analysis of an automobile supply chain involving a manufacturer and a retailer

We investigate an automobile supply chain where a manufacturer and a retailer serve a market with a fuel-efficient automobile under a scrappage program by the government. The program awards a subsidy to each consumer who trades in his or her used automobile with a new fuel-efficient automobile, if the manufacturer’s suggested retail price (MSRP) for the new one does not exceed a cutoff level. We derive the conditions assuring that the manufacturer has an incentive to qualify for the program, and find that when the cutoff level is low, the manufacturer may be unwilling to qualify for the program even if the subsidy is high. We also show that when the manufacturer qualifies for the program, increasing the MSRP cutoff level would raise the manufacturer’s expected profit but may decrease the expected sales. A moderate cutoff level can maximize the effectiveness of the program in stimulating the sales of fuel-efficient automobiles, whereas a sufficiently high cutoff level can result in the largest profit for the manufacturer. The retailer’s profit always increases when the manufacturer chooses to qualify for the program. Furthermore, we compute the government’s optimal MSRP cutoff level and subsidy for a given sales target, and find that as the program budget increases, the government should raise the subsidy but reduce the MSRP cutoff level to maximize sales.     

Pricing and effort investment for a newsvendor-type product

We investigate a dominant retailer’s optimal joint strategy of pricing and timing of effort investment and analyze how it influences the decision of the manufacturer, the total supply chain profit, and the consumers’ payoff. We consider two pricing schemes of the retailer, namely, dollar markup and percentage markup, and two effort-investment sequences, namely, ex-ante and ex-post. A combination of four cases is analyzed. Our results show that: (1) under the same effort-decision sequence, a percentage-markup pricing scheme leads to higher expected profit for the retailer and the whole supply chain, but a lower expected profit for the manufacturer and a higher retail price for the consumers; (2) under the same markup-pricing strategy, the dominant retailer always prefers to postpone her effort decision until the manufacturer makes a commitment to wholesale price, since it can result in a Pareto-improvement for all the supply chain members. That is, the retailer’s and manufacturer’s expected profits are higher and the consumers pay a lower retail price; and (3) among the four joint strategies, the dominant retailer always prefers the joint strategy of percentage-markup plus ex-post effort decision. However, the dominated manufacturer always prefers the joint strategy of dollar-markup plus ex-post effort decision, which is also beneficial to the end consumers.     

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.     

Quality improvement vs. advertising support: Which strategy works better for a manufacturer?

We consider a marketing channel with a single manufacturer and a single retailer, where both advertising and quality improvement contribute to the build-up of goodwill. In a non-coop scenario, the retailer controls the advertising efforts while the manufacturer controls the quality improvements and wholesale price. Although improving quality positively contributes to goodwill, it also increases the production cost, thereby reducing the manufacturer’s profit. In a coop scenario, the manufacturer supports the retailer’s advertising while decreasing his investments in quality. We investigate the conditions under which a coop program is beneficial when such a trade-off occurs. Our results demonstrate that only when advertising significantly contributes to goodwill the manufacturer has an incentive to cooperate and a coop program turns out to be Pareto-improving. Conversely, the retailer is always better off with a coop program. Moreover, the channel is operational- and marketing-driven when quality effectiveness is high independent of advertising effectiveness or when both quality and advertising effectiveness are large. In all other cases, the channel is marketing-driven.     

Retail competition and cooperative advertising

We consider a cooperative advertising channel consisting of a manufacturer selling its product through a retailer in competition with another independent retailer. The manufacturer subsidizes its retailer’s advertising only when a certain threshold is positive. Moreover, the manufacturer’s support for its retailer is higher under competition than in its absence.     

An integrated production and inventory model to dampen upstream demand variability in the supply chain

We consider a two-echelon supply chain: a single retailer holds a finished goods inventory to meet an i.i.d. customer demand, and a single manufacturer produces the retailer’s replenishment orders on a make-to-order basis. In this setting the retailer’s order decision has a direct impact on the manufacturer’s production. It is a well known phenomenon that inventory control policies at the retailer level often propagate customer demand variability towards the manufacturer, sometimes even in an amplified form (known as the bullwhip effect). The manufacturer, however, prefers to smooth production, and thus he prefers a smooth order pattern from the retailer. At first sight a decrease in order variability comes at the cost of an increased variance of the retailer’s inventory levels, inflating the retailer’s safety stock requirements. However, integrating the impact of the retailer’s order decision on the manufacturer’s production leads to new insights. A smooth order pattern generates shorter and less variable (production/replenishment) lead times, introducing a compensating effect on the retailer’s safety stock. We show that by including the impact of the order decision on lead times, the order pattern can be smoothed to a considerable extent without increasing stock levels. This leads to a situation where both parties are better off.     

Advertising coordination games of a manufacturer and a retailer while introducing a new product

Two kinds of vertical cooperative advertising program are considered in a distribution channel constituted by a manufacturer and a retailer, where the manufacturer pays part of the retailer’s advertising costs. In the first participation scheme, the manufacturer chooses his/her advertising participation rate in the retailer’s advertising effort and then each player determines the advertising effort that maximizes his/her profit. In the second scheme, the retailer chooses the manufacturer’s participation rate and then the manufacturer determines the advertising efforts of both players with the objective of maximizing the manufacturer’s profit. Each participation scheme corresponds to a special Stackelberg game: the manufacturer is the leader of the first, while the retailer is the leader of the second. The Stackelberg equilibrium advertising efforts and participation rate in both games are provided. Then the equilibrium strategies of the two players in the analyzed scenarios are compared with the Nash equilibrium in the competitive framework. Finally, the conditions which suggest a special kind of agreement to a player are analyzed. This work was supported by the Italian Ministry of University and Research and the University of Padua.