Equilibrium contract selection strategy in chain-to-chain competition with demand uncertainty

This paper investigates the equilibrium contract selection problem for the dominant suppliers in two competing supply chains with stochastic and price-sensitive demand. The two suppliers, acting as the Stackelberg leaders, produce substitutable products and distribute them through each exclusive retailer, and can provide either a consignment contract or a wholesale-price contract. The equilibrium behaviours of the suppliers and retailers are investigated in three different scenarios: (1) the consignment contract scenario; (2) the wholesale-price contract scenario; and (3) the hybrid contract scenario. We prove that the equilibrium contracting strategy is of the threshold type: when the cost-share rates of the two retailers are above certain thresholds, both suppliers select consignment contracts; when the cost-share rates of the two retailers are lower than certain thresholds, both suppliers select wholesale-price contracts; when one retailer’s cost-share rate is above a certain threshold and the other is lower than a certain threshold, the supplier with large retailer’s cost-share rate selects the consignment contract and the other supplier with small retailer’s cost-share rate selects the wholesale-price contract. Furthermore, these thresholds depend on price sensitivities.     

移动学习软件打卡返现的免费增值策略研究

考虑网络外部性因素,研究移动学习软件打卡返现的免费增值策略。分别构建企业在垄断市场和竞争市场下的数学模型,得到不同市场结构下企业最优的产品价格、需求及利润,并通过均衡结果分析企业的策略选择。研究表明：(1)在垄断市场中,企业应当选择打卡返现策略,此时产品定价较高,付费市场需求较低。(2)在竞争市场中,对于企业2(劣势企业)而言,无论企业1(优势企业)采取何种策略,均不应选择打卡返现策略;对于企业1(优势企业)而言,只有当两家企业产品差异程度较大时,才应选择打卡返现策略。     

Product-design and pricing strategies with remanufacturing

In this paper, we consider a supply chain that consists of an original equipment manufacturer (OEM) producing new products and a remanufacturer recovering the used items. The OEM often faces a strategic dilemma when determining the degree of disassemblability of its product design, as high disassemblability decreases the OEM’s production costs as well as the remanufacturer’s recovery costs. However, high disassemblability may be harmful to the OEM in a market in which the remanufacturer is encouraged to intensify price competition with the OEM because design for high disassemblability leads to larger cost savings in remanufacturing. We first formulate a two-period model to investigate the OEM’s product-design strategy and the remanufacturer’s pricing strategy in an extensive-form game, in which the equilibrium decisions of the resulting scenarios are derived. Next, we show the thresholds that determine whether remanufacturing is constrained by collection, the thresholds for the remanufacturer’s choice of a profitable pricing strategy, and the thresholds for determining the OEM’s product-design strategy. Finally, we expand the model for a multiple-period problem to show that the main insights obtained from the two-period model can be applied.     

Exploring greedy criteria for the dynamic traveling purchaser problem

Given a set of products and a set of markets, the traveling purchaser problem looks for a tour visiting a subset of the markets to satisfy products demand at the minimum purchasing and traveling costs. In this paper, we analyze the dynamic variant of the problem (D-TPP) where the quantity made available in each market for each product may decrease over time. We introduce and compare several greedy strategies and test their impact on the solution in terms of feasibility and costs. In particular, we study an incremental approach where an initial naive strategy is improved and refined by a number of variants. Some of the proposed heuristics take into account either one of the two objective costs, while others are based on both traveling and purchasing costs. Extensive computational results are also provided on randomly generated instances.     

Discounted and finitely repeated minority games with public signals

We consider a repeated game where at each stage players simultaneously choose one of the two rooms. The players who choose the less crowded room are rewarded with one euro. The players in the same room do not recognize each other, and between the stages only the current majority room is publicly announced, hence the game has imperfect public monitoring. An undiscounted version of this game was considered by Renault et al. [Renault, J., Scarlatti, S., Scarsini, M., 2005. A folk theorem for minority games. Games Econom. Behav. 53 (2), 208–230], who proved a folk theorem. Here we consider a discounted version and a finitely repeated version of the game, and we strengthen our previous result by showing that the set of equilibrium payoffs Hausdorff-converges to the feasible set as either the discount factor goes to one or the number of repetition goes to infinity. We show that the set of public equilibria for this game is strictly smaller than the set of private equilibria.     

差异化定价策略下政府规制对生产者尽规模式选择的影响

单寡头垄断生产者同时生产新产品和再制造品,政府通过规定最低循环率对生产者行为进行约束。首先,研究差异化定价策略下政府规制对生产者尽规模式选择的影响,即生产者责任实现情况;然后,探究两种定价策略下生产者尽规的实现方式;最后,分析生产者如何选择两种定价策略。研究结果表明,生产者有三种尽规模式,并得到各尽规模式之间的阈值;随着规制水平的提高,低定价策略下将通过扩大新产品和再制造品生产规模的方式实现尽规,而高定价策略则通过减少新产品产量和增加再制造品的产量的方式实现尽规;当绿色消费者比例较大时,应采取高定价策略,反之则应采取低定价策略。     

Competing first passage percolation on random regular graphs

We consider two competing first passage percolation processes started from uniformly chosen subsets of a random regular graph on N vertices. The processes are allowed to spread with different rates, start from vertex subsets of different sizes or at different times. We obtain tight results regarding the sizes of the vertex sets occupied by each process, showing that in the generic situation one process will occupy vertices, for some . The value of α is calculated in terms of the relative rates of the processes, as well as the sizes of the initial vertex sets and the possible time advantage of one process. The motivation for this work comes from the study of viral marketing on social networks. The described processes can be viewed as two competing products spreading through a social network (random regular graph). Considering the processes which grow at different rates (corresponding to different attraction levels of the two products) or starting at different times (the first to market advantage) allows to model aspects of real competition. The results obtained can be interpreted as one of the two products taking the lion share of the market. We compare these results to the same process run on d dimensional grids where we show that in the generic situation the two products will have a linear fraction of the market each. © 2016 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Random Struct. Alg., 50, 534–583, 2017     

网络效应影响下品牌商与模仿者的竞争策略

近年来,品牌商与模仿者的竞争问题引起了社会的广泛关注。本文构建了包含一个品牌商和一个潜在模仿者的两周期动态博弈模型,且消费者具有策略性行为。品牌商在第一周期是市场的垄断者,若模仿者在第二周期进入市场,那么第二周期会变成双寡头市场。模仿者入侵市场除了会引起竞争效应外,与品牌产品的相似性也会引起网络效应,从而增加品牌产品的市场接受度。因此,面对模仿者入侵,品牌商需要同时权衡竞争效应与网络效应两方面的影响。研究结果表明：(1)网络效应并不总是对品牌商和模仿者的价格和需求等产生积极影响。(2)模仿产品质量不可提升过高,当模仿产品质量和品牌产品质量过分接近时,两个企业的利润都会降低。(3)当网络效应较小或者模仿产品质量过高时,品牌商在双寡头市场的需求可能会高于垄断市场的需求。     

Jump or compensate? Strategy flexibility in the number domain up to 100

This study investigates elementary school children’s flexible use of mental calculation strategies on additions and subtractions in the number domain 20–100. Sixty third-graders of three different mathematical achievement levels individually solved a series of 2-digit additions and subtractions in one choice and two no-choice conditions. In the choice condition, children could choose between the compensation (56 + 29 = ?; 56 + 30 = 86, 86 ? 1 = 85) and jump strategy (56 + 29 = ?; 56 + 20 = 76, 76 + 9 = 85) on each item. In the two no-choice conditions, children had to solve each item with either the compensation or the jump strategy. The results demonstrated that children of all achievement levels spontaneously applied both the compensation and the jump strategy to solve the items from the choice condition. Furthermore, they all executed the compensation strategy equally accurately, but faster than the jump strategy in the no-choice conditions. Finally, children neither took into account the expected task nor individual strategy efficiency characteristics during the strategy choice process. Results are discussed in terms of recent models of adaptive strategy choices and instructional practices in the number domain 20–100.     

Measuring the effects of new brand introduction on inter-brand strategic interaction

This paper empirically investigates the effects of a new brand introduction on the market structure of a product market, i.e., the nature of competition among existing brands. The model is based on the discrete choice multinomial logit model in which the household-specific brand intercepts are decomposed into brand locations in attribute space and households' importance weights for these attributes. The formulation also incorporates the effects of marketing variables on brand choice behavior. The relative proximity of brands in the attribute space provides a measure of the intensity of competitive rivalry among brands. A new brand introduction results in an additional location in this space. Three consequences of the introduction are investigated. (i) Impact on brand locations of extant brands. (ii) Change in the importance weights assigned by households to the attributes. (iii) Effects on households' sensitivities to marketing activities. As some or all of the above could change, these three effects result in eight combinations that need to be studied. The general model is one in which all three components are allowed to change and this nests the remaining seven specifications. The specification that is most consistent with the data can, therefore, be isolated via a statistical test of nested hypotheses. Identifying the consequences of the introduction for market structure has implications for managerial action. An empirical application of the model to household scanner panel data using liquid laundry detergents is provided.     

Optimisation of integrated reverse logistics networks with different product recovery routes

The awareness of importance of product recovery has grown swiftly in the past few decades. This paper focuses on a problem of inventory control and production planning optimisation of a generic type of an integrated Reverse Logistics (RL) network which consists of a traditional forward production route, two alternative recovery routes, including repair and remanufacturing and a disposal route. It is assumed that demand and return quantities are uncertain. A quality level is assigned to each of the returned products. Due to uncertainty in the return quantity, quantity of returned products of a certain quality level is uncertain too. The uncertainties are modelled using fuzzy trapezoidal numbers. Quality thresholds are used to segregate the returned products into repair, remanufacturing or disposal routes. A two phase fuzzy mixed integer optimisation algorithm is developed to provide a solution to the inventory control and production planning problem. In Phase 1, uncertainties in quantity of product returns and quality of returns are considered to calculate the quantities to be sent to different recovery routes. These outputs are inputs into Phase 2 which generates decisions on component procurement, production, repair and disassembly. Finally, numerical experiments and sensitivity analysis are carried out to better understand the effects of quality of returns and RL network parameters on the network performance. These parameters include quantity of returned products, unit repair costs, unit production cost, setup costs and unit disposal cost.     

Postponed two-pricing and ordering opportunity for selling a single season inventoried product

Postponement strategies are becoming increasingly important in light of a global trend in which products’ life-cycles are decreasing, such that even products that are not traditionally considered seasonal become “obsolete” within a short period of time (e.g., electronic devices, new cars). Our work addresses postponed-pricing and ordering decisions for a retailer who sells a newsvendor-type inventoried product, in a selling season that is divided into two sub-periods. The division of the selling season enables the retailer to on-line adjust her decisions when faced with a scenario (one that is highly prevalent in reality) in which potential demand changes (increases or decreases) following consumers’ experiences of the product in early stages of the selling season. We assume that the retailer has two opportunities for receiving shipments: prior to the first sub-period and prior to the second one. The retailer determines each order quantity (base-stock level) on the basis of the demand distribution for the corresponding sub-period. In each sub-period, after observing additional market signals, the retailer determines the price of the product for that sub-period. With the aid of a stochastic programming approach, we develop optimization problems and solution methods in order to obtain pricing and ordering decisions that maximize the expected profit of the retailer. We present an extensive numerical example that compares the suggested strategy to three alternative strategies, and conclude that price postponement and responsiveness to demand changes can each reduce leftovers and lost sales as well as substantially increase expected profit.     

Supply planning models for a remanufacturer under just-in-time manufacturing environment with reverse logistics

We study a supply planning problem in a manufacturing system with two stages. The first stage is a remanufacturer that supplies two closely-related components to the second (manufacturing) stage, which uses each component as the basis for its respective product. The used products are recovered from the market by a third-party logistic provider through an established reverse logistics network. The remanufacturer may satisfy the manufacturer’s demand either by purchasing new components or by remanufacturing components recovered from the returned used products. The remanufacturer’s costs arise from product recovery, remanufacturing components, purchasing original components, holding inventories of recovered products and remanufactured components, production setups (at the first stage and at each component changeover), disposal of recovered products that are not remanufactured, and coordinating the supply modes. The objective is to develop optimal production plans for different production strategies. These strategies are differentiated by whether inventories of recovered products or remanufactured components are carried, and by whether the order in which retailers are served during the planning horizon may be resequenced. We devise production policies that minimize the total cost at the remanufacturer by specifying the quantity of components to be remanufactured, the quantity of new components to be purchased from suppliers, and the quantity of recovered used products that must be disposed. The effects of production capacity are also explored. A comprehensive computational study provides insights into this closed-loop supply chain for those strategies that are shown to be NP-hard.     

Flexible capacity strategy with multiple market periods under demand uncertainty and investment constraint

We establish a flexible capacity strategy model with multiple market periods under demand uncertainty and investment constraints. In the model, a firm makes its capacity decision under a financial budget constraint at the beginning of the planning horizon which embraces n market periods. In each market period, the firm goes through three decision-making stages: the safety production stage, the additional production stage and the optimal sales stage. We formulate the problem and obtain the optimal capacity, the optimal safety production, the optimal additional production and the optimal sales of each market period under different situations. We find that there are two thresholds for the unit capacity cost. When the capacity cost is very low, the optimal capacity is determined by its financial budget; when the capacity cost is very high, the firm keeps its optimal capacity at its safety production level; and when the cost is in between of the two thresholds, the optimal capacity is determined by the capacity cost, the number of market periods and the unit cost of additional production. Further, we explore the endogenous safety production level. We verify the conditions under which the firm has different optimal safety production levels. Finally, we prove that the firm can benefit from the investment only when the designed planning horizon is longer than a threshold. Moreover, we also derive the formulae for the above three thresholds.     

基于在线评论的多个竞争制造商和零售商的产品定价策略

在线评论作为一种产品信息传播载体,越来越受到网上电商及消费者的重视,并在很大程度上影响消费者的购买决策。本文在多个竞争性制造商为在线零售商提供可替代性产品并通过零售商销售给网络消费者的电子商务环境下,研究在线评论信息如何影响网络消费者购买决策及在线零售商和制造商的定价策略。以neo-Hoteling模型为基础,构建了依赖零售渠道在线评论的消费者选择模型,并通过模型求解定量分析了二级供应链结构分散系统下在线评论对多个竞争性制造商及零售商最优决策的影响。得到当制造商基于评论制定最优定价策略时,在线评论对市场竞争强度没有影响,但决定潜在市场大小;各产品的均衡批发价及销售价按一定的比例随评论揭示的该产品与其他产品质量均值之差(正或负)增加或减少,评论信息通常会使制造商因好评而获利,由于评论增加了不同产品需求的不对称性,零售商因而具有更大的调价空间,往往通过提高(降低)占据有利(不利)评论的产品价格获得更高的利润。     

Suppliers’ competition and manufacturer’s product mix: the role of ingredient brand

This paper proposes a pricing game among a manufacturer and two competing suppliers. One of the suppliers establishes an ingredient brand, which can enhance the valuations of the end products. The equilibrium is derived to investigate the impact of the ingredient brand awareness and the production costs on the suppliers’ pricing competition, the manufacturer’s product mix and retail price(s), and profits. The result shows that the manufacturer may provide unique product or differentiated products, depending on the effectiveness of ingredient branding strategy. We distinguish two different monopolistic scenarios in supplier market and provide the condition for each supplier to survive. We find that the ingredient branding strategy mitigates the pricing competition between suppliers and benefits the manufacturer in a low production cost industry.     

Consumer choice behaviour and new product development: an integrated market simulation approach

The extremely high costs associated with the commercial failure of a new product, stresses the importance of a model that will effectively forecast the market penetration of a product at the design stage. The purpose of our study is to discover heuristics that will better explain market share, an issue of considerable concern to industry, which also, if successfully pursued, will increase the value of the analytical tools developed for managers. A method easy to implement is presented, which improves the value of market simulations in conjoint analysis. The proposed approach deals with two issues common to traditional market simulations in the context of conjoint analysis applications—the lack of differential impact of attributes across alternatives and the absence of accounting for differential substitution across brands (ie, the Independence from Irrelevant Alternatives problem). We deal with the first issue by ‘tuning’ utilities with individual level exponents, as opposed to a common exponent under the ‘ALPHA’ rule (the current state of the art approach). These exponents derive from the range, skewness and kurtosis of the distribution of utilities that a respondent assigns to various products. While these exponents are individual specific, the effects of the coefficients are assumed to be homogeneous across consumers to preserve model parsimony, while accounting for observed heterogeneity in the data. The second issue is studied in the model via a similarity ‘correction’ for each pair of products. The performance of the approach is validated both on real data from a market survey concerning milk, and on simulated data through the design of a Monte Carlo experiment. The results of the simulation for different market scenarios indicate that the approach appropriately exhibits the theoretical properties that are necessary for the efficient representation of consumer choice behaviour. In addition, the proposed model outperforms the state of the art methodology, as well as some more traditional approaches, with regard to the forecasting accuracy on market shares estimation, both on the real and the simulated data sets. The results obtained have important implications for marketing managers concerning the design of new products. A new concept can be tested before it enters the production stage, using data obtained from a market survey. The high predictive accuracy of the model may assist a firm in minimizing the uncertainty and risks associated with a new product launch. The case study with data from a real market survey, illustrates the practical applicability of the approach.     

BOOK REVIEWS

Book reviewed in this article: Physics, A Basic Science, by Elmer E. Burns, Teacher of Physics (Emeritus), Austin High School, Chicago; Frank L. Verwiebe, Associate Professor of Physics, Hamilton College, Research Associate, Army Institute; and Herbert C. Hazel, Major, U. S. Marine Corps. Practical Radio Communication, by Arthur R. Nilson, Chief Instructor, Nilson Radio School, New York, N. Y. Lieutenant (Tecknicist) (Communications) U.S.N.R. (Retired); Member Institute of Radio Engineers, and J. L. Hornung, Lieutenant A-V (R.S) U.S.N.R.; Member Institute of Radio Engineers; Formerly Radio Instructor, New York University. Machines, by Charles R. Wallendorf, Administrative Assistant, Woodrow Wilson Vocational High School, Jamaica, N. Y., Frank Stewart, Department of Applied Physics, Brooklyn Technical High School, N. Y., George Luedeke, Supervisor of Shop Subjects in Vocational High Schools, Board of Education, New York, N. Y., and Dominic M. Chiarello, Department of Applied Electricity, Brooklyn Technical High School, N. Y. Systematics and the Origin of Species, by Ernst Mayr Common Edible Mushrooms, by Clyde M. Christensen Handbook of Microscopic Characteristics of Tissues and Organs, 2nd edition, by Karl A. Stiles Plane Trigonometry, by Arthur W. Weeks, M.A., The Phillips Exeter Academy, and H. Gray Funkhouser, Ph.D. Analytic Geometry, by Frederick H. Steen, Ph.D., Associate Professor of Mathematics, Allegheny College, and Donald H. Ballou, Ph.D., Assistant Professor of Mathematics, Middlebury College. Electricity, by Charles A. Rirsde. Principles and Practice of Radio Servicing, by H. J. Hicks, M.S. Experimental Electronics, by Ralph H. Müller, Professor of Chemistry, New York University; R. L. Carman, Assistant Professor of Chemistry, New York University; and M. E. Droz, Assistant Professor of Chemistry, New York University. Simplified Industrial Mathematics, by John H. Wolfe, Ph.D., Supervisor of Ford Apprentice Training, Ford Motor Company, Dearborn, Michigan; William F. Mueller, A.B., Principal of Ford Aircraft Apprentice School, Ford Motor Company, Dearborn, Michigan; and Seibert D. Mullikin, B.S., Principal of Ford Airplane Apprentice School, Ford Motor Company, Willow Run, Michigan.     

Production planning and inventory control with remanufacturing and disposal

In this paper we consider a stochastic inventory system with production, remanufacturing, and disposal operations. Customer demands must either be fulfilled from the production of new products or by the remanufacturing of used products. Used products are either remanufactured or disposed of. To coordinate production, remanufacturing and disposal operations efficiently, we extend the PUSH and PULL strategies that Van der Laan et al. developed to control a system in which all returned products are remanufactured and no planned disposals occur. The other contributions of this paper are to indicate when and why planned disposals are economically beneficial, and to compare the PUSH-disposal strategy to the PULL-disposal strategy. In addition, we investigate the robustness of the control parameters of the PUSH- and PULL-disposal strategy over the different stages of a product life-cycle.     

外包制造下政府补贴对低碳供应链影响分析

为分析外包制造下,政府补贴对低碳供应链竞争的影响,基于低碳产品外包制造,构建一个制造商、一个外包制造商和一个销售商组成的博弈模型。基于此模型,对比分析政府三种补贴策略对两种产品市场竞争机理的影响。研究得到:政府补贴给制造商或销售商时,单位委托制造价格要高于补贴给外包制造商时,也即,当政府采取补贴策略且不补贴给外包制造商时,外包制造商会通过增加单位委托制造价格转移政府补贴;政府补贴策略对单位普通产品批发价格和零售价格无影响,但政府补贴策略会减少普通产品销售量,增加低碳产品销售量;政府补贴虽然减少普通产品收益,但政府补贴增加低碳产品收益,且低碳产品增加收益大于普通产品减少收益,也即政府补贴增加制造商和销售商的利润;政府补贴策略减少两种产品对环境造成的影响,增加消费者剩余和社会剩余。