Channel coordination under two-level trade credits and demand uncertainty

This study considers a decentralized supply chain where a retailer has an opportunity to order a product from a supplier prior to the sales season to satisfy uncertain demand. The retailer provides trade credit to end customers and makes credit period and order quantity decisions to maximize profits. The end demand is both random and credit period-dependent. On the basis of the newsvendor model, this paper focuses on channel coordination when a retailer provides trade credit to end customers. When the supplier also provides trade credit to the retailer, we show that the traditional trade credit contract cannot coordinate the channel. Four composite contracts based on trade credit (trade credit cost sharing with buy back or quantity flexibility; modified trade credit with buy back or quantity flexibility) are provided to induce the retailer to make decisions while optimizing the channel profit. This paper shows that the retailer provides a longer credit period to its customers and orders a larger quantity from the supplier under the composite contracts. With these contracts, the profit sharing between both parties depends on the wholesale price (Pareto improvement) for the fixed retail price and the purchasing cost.     

Consignment contracts with retail competition

Consignment contracts have been widely employed in many industries. Under such contracts, items are sold at a retailer’s but the supplier retains the full ownership of the inventory until purchased by consumers; the supplier collects payment from the retailer based on actual units sold. We investigate how competition among retailers influences the supply chain decisions and profits under different consignment arrangements, namely a consignment price contract and a consignment contract with revenue share. First, we investigate how these two consignment contracts and a price only contract compare from the perspective of each supply chain partner. We find that the retailers benefit more from a consignment price contract than from a consignment contract with revenue share or a price only contract, regardless of the level of retailer differentiation. The supplier’s most beneficial contact, however, critically depends upon the level of retailer differentiation: a consignment contract with revenue share is preferable for the supplier if retailer differentiation is strong; otherwise a consignment price contract is preferable. Second, we study how retailer differentiation affects the profits of all supply chain partners. We find that less retailer differentiation improves the supplier’s profit for both types of consignment contract. Moreover, less retailer differentiation improves profits of the retailers in a consignment price contract, but not necessarily in a consignment contract with revenue share.     

销售商出售看跌期权的供应链优化研究

在由一个供应商和一个销售商组成的单期两级供应链中,处于主导地位的销售商以其卖场所具有的销售能力参与供应链合作,并从销售的每一个产品中获取既定收益。同时,销售商还向供应商出售建立在产品销售量保障基础上的看跌期权,以激励供应商参与供应链合作。论文对上述情形的销售商出售看跌期权的供应链合作问题进行了研究,通过建模与优化分析,证明了在销售商提供看跌期权的供应链合作中,供应商存在唯一的最优生产批量和看跌期权采购量,以及销售商存在最优的从每一单位产品销售中获取的既定收益。论文还揭示了销售商提供看跌期权,虽然无法实现供应链协调,但可以实现供应链参与企业所获得的收益与其所承担的风险相匹配。最后,论文论证了在销售商出售看跌期权机制下,供应链存在收益损失较小的理想合作区域。     

公平偏好下基于批发价契约的供应链 协调研究

文中基于Nash讨价还价博弈思想建立公平偏好框架,构建公平偏好效用体系,以此为基础对采用批发价契约的报童模型展开行为研究,采用数理模型和数值分析方法分析了零售商和供应商的公平偏好行为对零售商和供应链系统最优订货量的影响,即零售商和供应商同时关注公平时,零售商和供应链系统的最优订货量趋于保守;并发现零售商和供应链系统的最优订货量随零售商的公平偏好程度增加而递减,但随着供应商公平偏好程度增加而递增,且供应链系统最优订货量变化趋势比零售商明显．然后,在此基础上分析比较得到,无论供应商和零售商是否偏好公平,批发价契约都不能实现供应链协调．最后,对批发价、零售价、供应商生产成本、零售商缺货成本和供应商缺货成本进行敏感度分析．     

零售商占优下的两部定价合同与通道费

本文考虑由单个占优的零售商和单个供应商组成的二级供应链模型.在价格相依的随机需求下,研究分散系统下的批发价格合同与两部定价合同.在一定的条件下得到两种合同中供应链成员的最优决策和利润以及供应链系统的利润.分析表明,当零售商占优时两部定价合同比批发价格合同更有效.这在一定程度上说明当前零售业中收取通道费的合理性.     

基于M-CVaR的供应链收益共享契约协调研究

基于收益共享契约能有效改善供应链运作效率且实践中不仅存在风险中性、厌恶型,还存在风险喜好型供应链成员。运用均值-条件风险价值统一度量决策者的风险喜好、中性及厌恶水平,并据此研究考虑决策者风险偏好水平的供应链收益共享契约协调问题。首先建立零售商及供应链整体的均值-条件风险价值模型;然后研究考虑决策者风险偏好水平的供应链收益共享契约协调问题;最后讨论供应链成员的风险偏好水平对最优订购量及最优批发价格的影响,并通过数值算例进行验证。结果表明产品的最优批发价格随着零售商悲观系数的增大而减小,随着供应商悲观系数的增大而增大,而最优订购量随着零售商悲观系数的增大而减小,亦随着供应商悲观系数的增大而减小。因此,设计供应链收益共享契约时应考虑成员的风险偏好水平。     

供应链中的生产能力投资风险分配

在供应链中,每个管理者都会面临各种各样的供应和需求不确定性.这些不确定性会造成生产能力的过剩或不足,从而导致很大的利益损失,但是未必每个公司都会面临生产能力投资风险.针对一个单生产商单零售商系统,本文分析了三种不同的合同设计（推进式批发价合同,拉动式批发价合同和期权合同）对生产商和零售商的利润和生产能力投资风险的影响,推进式批发价合同和拉动式批发价均不能协调供应链,故我们找到其帕累托集;而对于期权合同,它能够协调整个供应链并且整合推进式和拉动式两种批发价合同使得生产商和零售商共同承担生产能力投资风险.在分析的过程中,我们将结果与已有的结果进行了比较,指出了其异同之处.     

Pareto-optimal contracts for a supply chain with satisficing objectives

We analyse a decentralized supply chain consisting of a supplier and a retailer, each with a satisficing objective, that is, to maximize the probability of achieving a predetermined target profit. The supply chain is examined under two types of commonly used contracts: linear tariff contracts (including wholesale price contracts as special cases) and buy-back contracts. First, we identify the Pareto-optimal contract(s) for each contractual form. In particular, it is shown that there is a unique wholesale price that is Pareto optimal for both contractual types. Second, we evaluate the performance of the Pareto-optimal contracts. In contrast to the well-known results for a supply chain with the traditional expected profit objectives, we show that wholesale price contracts can coordinate the supply chain whereas buy-back contracts cannot. This provides an additional justification for the popularity of wholesale price contracts besides their simplicities and lower administration costs.     

Channel coordination under fairness concerns and nonlinear demand

The supply chain literature analyzing supplier–retailer contracts and channel coordination has typically focused on profit or revenue maximization as the members’ sole objective. In such settings, it is well known that a simple wholesale price contract is not effective in coordinating the channel due to double marginalization. Recently, Cui et al. [Cui, T.H., Raju, J.S., Zhang, Z.J., 2007. Fairness and channel coordination. Management Science 53 (8) 1303–1314] introduced the members’ fairness concerns into channel coordination. Assuming a linear demand function, the authors show that a coordinating wholesale price contract can be designed when only the retailer or both parties are concerned about fairness. In this paper, we extend the authors’ results to other nonlinear demand functions that are commonly used in the literature. Our analysis reveals that, compared to the linear demand, the exponential demand function requires less stringent conditions to achieve coordination when only the retailer is fairness-concerned.     

考虑公平关切的鲜活农产品供应链收益共享契约

研究收益共享契约下供应链成员具有公平关切时的鲜活农产品供应链协调问题。基于鲜活农产品的新鲜度和运输损耗因素,考虑供应链成员的公平关切特性,建立二级鲜活农产品供应链收益共享契约模型。进而分析了仅有零售商或供应商一方考虑公平关切,以及双方都考虑公平关切等不同情形下的供应链协调机制。分析结果表明,考虑供应链成员公平关切特性的情况下,当批发价满足一定条件时,收益共享契约能够使鲜活农产品供应链实现协调,且公平关切对供应链成员的效用有一定影响。最后运用算例对研究结果进行了验证。     

风险厌恶下的供应链收益共享契约协调模型研究

收益共享契约是实现供应链系统绩效改善或完美协调的一种机制.考虑了零售商与供应商分别具有风险厌恶决策偏好情况下,在随机市场需求下建立了由单供应商和单零售商组成的二级供应链的收益共享契约模型,并对模型进行了分析,揭示了供应商和零售商的风险厌恶决策偏好对收益共享契约参数的影响.研究结果表明:当销售商(供应商)的风险厌恶控制在...     

Call,put and bidirectional option contracts in agricultural supply chains with sales effort

This paper develops option contracts in a supplier-retailer agricultural supply chain where the market demand depends on sales effort. First, we examine a benchmark case of integrated supply chain with the loss rate. Second, we introduce three coordinating option contracts led by the supplier to reduce the retailer's risk, where the call option contract can reduce the shortage risk, the put option contract can reduce the inventory risk and the bidirectional option contract can reduce the bilateral risk. We find that both the optimal initial order quantity and the optimal option quantity increase with the sales effort and the option price will balance the influence of the loss rate on supply chain coordination. Furthermore, the bidirectional option price is the highest while its option quantity is the least, and the put option initial order quantity is the highest. Third, we also consider an option contract led by the retailer to reduce the supplier's wholesale risk. Among the above four option contracts, we find that the option quantity led by the retailer is the highest. Finally, the numerical examples present the impact of the parameters on the optimal decisions, and provide practical managerial insights to reduce the different risk in the agricultural supply chain.     

Study on the coordination contract in supply chain under trade credit based on risk compensation

Trade credit changes the inventory risk between supplier and retailer. This leads to failure in the coordination of the supply chain. Considering that the supplier bears the retailer’s inventory risk under the credit condition, in this paper, the contract is constructed by combining the risk compensation and quantity discount contract to re-coordinate the supply chain and analyze the contract. The results show that the contract can achieve voluntary supply chain coordination; and when the seller’s funds is within a certain range, the coordinate contract can perform in the form of the wholesale price contract, and the wholesale price is influenced by its own funds and product value. In the end, a numerical example is given to verify this conclusion.     

Coordinating a supply chain with effort and price dependent stochastic demand

This paper investigates the issue of channel coordination for a supply chain facing stochastic demand that is sensitive to both sales effort and retail price. In the standard newsvendor setting, the returns policy and the revenue sharing contract have been shown to be able to align incentives of the supply chain’s members so that the decentralized supply chain behaves as well as the integrated one. When the demand is influenced by both retail price and retailer sales effort, none of the above traditional contracts can coordinate the supply chain. To resolve this issue, we explore a variety of other contract types including joint return policy with revenue sharing contract, return policy with sales rebate and penalty (SRP) contract, and revenue sharing contract with SRP. We find that only the properly designed returns policy with SRP contract is able to achieve channel coordination and lead to a Pareto improving win–win situation for supply chain members. We then provide analytical method to determine the contract parameters and finally we use a numerical example to illustrate the findings and gain more insights.     

Wholesale-price contract of supply chain with information gathering

This paper investigates a wholesale-price contract of supply chain under the endogenous information structure. This supply chain consists of one supplier and one retailer during the selling season. The retailer does not know his selling cost but can spend resources to acquire information. The supplier offers a contract, which induces the retailer to gather information and generate more production orders with beta costs. We find that there exists an upper bound of the information gathering cost such that the supplier induces the retailer to gather information. The increasing cost of information gathering may decrease the order quantity and wholesale price. Moreover, the cost beta has an impact on the expected profits of the two parties. With the increasing cost of information gathering, the supplier’s expected profit is reduced, while that of the retailer becomes ambiguous in terms of the distribution function and the interval of selling cost information. Finally, a numerical example is presented to explain the main results.     

公平偏好下基于回购契约的供应链协调模型

在报童模型的基础上,以一个供应商和一个零售商组成的两级供应链为研究背景,把公平关切引入到回购契约的研究中,并根据Nash讨价还价博弈思想建立公平偏好框架,通过建立效用函数模型,研究了公平关切对回购契约的影响．研究发现,公平关切不会影响回购契约的协调性,公平关切程度也不会影响零售商的最优订购量,进而可以得出,即使供应商在不知道零售商对公平偏好的程度下,依然可以通过制定合适的批发价格和回购价格来做出使自己效用最大化的最优决策．另外,通过灵敏度分析发现,在公平关切时,零售商的最优订购量会随着产品单位生产成本的增加而增加．     

Dynamic conformance and design quality in a supply chain: an assessment of contracts’ coordinating power

We consider a two-echelon supply chain involving one manufacturer and one supplier who collaborate on improving both design and conformance quality. Design quality is supposed to increase product desirability, and therefore market demand, while conformance quality should reduce the proportion of defective items, and therefore increase the manufacturer’s sales revenue. We investigate how the supply chain parties allocate effort between design and conformance quality under both cooperative and non-cooperative settings in an intertemporal framework. Furthermore, we evaluate wholesale price contracts and revenue-sharing contracts in terms of their performance and coordination power. We show that although a revenue-sharing contract enables the manufacturer to effectively involve the supplier in quality improvement, neither contract type allows for perfect coordination resulting in the quality that can be achieved by a cooperative supply chain. We thus suggest a reward-based extension to the revenue-sharing contract, to ensure system-wide optimal quality performance. Importantly, we find that the supplier would be better off adopting a reward-based revenue sharing contract and refusing a standard revenue-sharing contract, while the opposite would be true for the manufacturer.     

Preferences for contractual forms in supply chains

The supply chain contracting literature has focused on incentive contracts designed to align supply chain members’ individual interests. A key finding of this literature is that members’ preferences for contractual forms are often at odds: the upstream supplier prefers relatively complex contracts that can coordinate the supply chain; however, the downstream retailer prefers a wholesale price-only contract because it leaves more surplus (than does a coordinating contract), which the retailer can capture. This paper addresses the following question: Under what circumstances do suppliers and retailers prefer the same contractual form? We study supply chain members’ preferences for contractual forms under three different competitive settings in which multiple supply chains compete to sell substitutable products in the same market. Our analysis suggests that both upstream and downstream sides of the supply chain may prefer the same “quantity discount” contract, which would eliminate the conflicts of interest that otherwise typify contracting situations. More interesting still is that both sides may also prefer the wholesale price-only contract; this finding provides a theoretical explanation for why that inefficient (but simple) contract is widely adopted in supply chain transactions.     

Revenue-sharing versus wholesale price mechanisms under different channel power structures

We consider a supply chain channel with two manufacturers and one retailer. Each manufacturer can choose either a wholesale price contract or a revenue-sharing contract with the retailer. We discuss and compare the results of two different types of contracts under different channel power structures, to check whether it is beneficial for manufacturers to use revenue-sharing contracts under different scenarios. Then we consider a supply chain channel with one manufacturer and two retailers. Each retailer can choose either a wholesale price contract or a revenue-sharing contract with the manufacturer. We analyze the likely outcomes under different scenarios to discover whether it is beneficial to use revenue-sharing contracts.     

分布自由时基于可控提前期的契约适应性研究

研究表明回购契约与收益共享契约具有等价性,然而二者却适用于不同的供应链。本文从提前期可控的视角并将供应链管理引入需求分布自由的市场环境,研究二者的适应性。首先构建一体化供应链系统的决策模型,基于模型推导其最优生产量和最优生产时点的存在性条件;然后分别以回购契约和收益共享契约作为激励机制,研究契约对单一供应商-零售商构成的二级分散供应链系统的适应性。结果表明,回购契约和收益共享契约均能协调供应链,但二者具有不同的适应性:当单位时间内边际生产成本增幅较大时,供应商偏好选择回购契约;提前压缩期越长,零售商越偏好选择收益共享契约。最后通过数值分析验证文章模型的有效性。