Pay‐Back‐Revenue‐Sharing Contract in Coordinating Supply Chains with Random Yield

We consider coordination issues in supply chains where supplier's production process is subject to random yield losses. For a simple supply chain with a single supplier and retailer facing deterministic demand, a pay back contract which has the retailer paying a discount price for the supplier's excess units can provide the right incentive for the supplier to increase his production size and achieve coordination. Building upon this result, we consider coordination issues for two other supply chains: one with competing retailers, the other with stochastic demand. When retailers compete for both demand and supply, they tend to over‐order. We show that a combination of a pay back and revenue sharing mechanism can coordinate the supply chain, with the pay back mechanism correcting the supplier's under‐producing problem and the revenue sharing mechanism correcting the retailers' over‐ordering problem. When demand is stochastic, we consider a modified pay‐back‐revenue‐sharing contract under which the retailer agrees to not only purchase the supplier's excess output (beyond the retailer's order), but also share with the supplier a portion of the revenue made from the sales of the excess output. We show that this contract, by giving the supplier additional incentives in the form of revenue share, can achieve coordination.     

Enabling Opportunism: Revenue Sharing when Sales Revenues are Unobservable

We consider a supply chain with a supplier that sells to a retailer under a revenue‐sharing arrangement. Demand is uncertain and unobservable to the supplier. We assume that the retailer is rational, that is, the retailer behaves opportunistically and underreports sales revenues to the supplier whenever such underreporting is profitable. Assuming the supplier has the ability to audit the retailer and learn about the actual sales revenues, we show that the supplier will never find it optimal to audit to the point that ensures truthful reporting for all demand realizations. By committing to an auditing policy, the supplier can exploit retailer opportunism and derive profits that at times even exceed those that could be obtained when dealing with a retailer that always strictly adheres to the agreed‐upon contract terms. We also show that the retailer's opportunistic behavior can increase total supply chain profits.     

Role of Random Capacity Risk and the Retailer in Decentralized Supply Chains with Competing Suppliers

This research considers a supply chain under the following conditions: (i) two heterogeneous suppliers are in competition, (ii) supply capacity is random and pricing is endogenous, (iii) consumer demand, with and without an intermediate retailer, is price dependent. Specifically, we examine how uncertainty in supply capacity affects optimal ordering and pricing decisions, supplier and retailer profits, and the incentives to reduce such uncertainty. When two suppliers sell through a monopolistic retailer, supply uncertainty not only affects the retailer's diversification strategy for replenishment, but also changes the suppliers’ wholesale price competition and the incentive for reducing capacity uncertainty. In this dual‐sourcing model, we show that the benefit of reducing capacity uncertainty depends on the cost heterogeneity between the suppliers. In addition, we show that a supplier does not necessarily benefit from capacity variability reduction. We contrast this incentive misalignment with findings from the single‐supplier case and a supplier‐duopoly case where both suppliers sell directly to market without the monopolistic retailer. In the latter single‐supplier and duopoly cases, we prove that the unreliable supplier always benefits from reducing capacity variability. These results highlight the role of the retailer's diversification strategy in distorting a supplier's incentive for reducing capacity uncertainty under supplier price competition.     

Contracting and Coordination under Asymmetric Production Cost Information

We analyze a supply chain consisting of a supplier and a retailer. The supplier's unit production cost, which characterizes his type, is only privately known to him. When trading with the retailer, the supplier demands a reservation profit that depends on his unit production cost. We model this problem as a game of adverse selection. In this model, the retailer offers a menu of contracts, each of which consists of two parameters: the ordering quantity and the supplier's share of the channel profit. We show that the optimal contract depends critically on a surrogate measure—the ratio of the types’ reservation profit differential to their production cost differential. An important implication from our analysis is that information asymmetry alone does not necessarily induce loss in channel efficiency. The optimal contract can coordinate the supply chain as long as the low‐cost supplier's cost efficiency is neither much overvalued nor much undervalued in the outside market. We further discuss the retailer's preference of the supplier's type under different market conditions, as well as evaluate the effects of the supplier's reservation profit, the retail price, and the demand uncertainty on the optimal contract.     

Supply Contract Design for Competing Heterogeneous Suppliers under Asymmetric Information

This study considers a supply chain with two heterogeneous suppliers and a common retailer whose type is either low‐volume or high‐volume. The retailer's type is unknown to the suppliers. The flexible supplier has a high variable cost and a low fixed cost, while the efficient supplier has a low variable cost and a high fixed cost. Each supplier offers the retailer a menu of contracts. The retailer chooses the contract that maximizes its expected profit. For this setting, we characterize the equilibrium contract menus offered by the suppliers to the retailer. We find that the equilibrium contract menus depend on which supplier–retailer match can generate the highest supply chain profit and on how much information rent the supplier may need to pay. An important feature of the equilibrium contract menus is that the contract assigned to the more profitable retailer will coordinate the supply chain, while the contract assigned to the less profitable retailer may not. In addition, in some circumstances, the flexible supplier may choose not to serve the high‐volume retailer, in order to avoid excessive information rent.     

Impacts of demand uncertainty on retailer's dominance and manufacturer-retailer supply chain cooperation

Recent studies in marketing and distribution channels have shown that the balance of power between manufacturers and retailers is shifting. Based on this observation, we investigate a two-echelon supply chain with a manufacturer and a retailer in this paper. We first develop retailer-dominant non-cooperative game models by introducing a sensitivity of retailer's order quantity to manufacturer's wholesale price; then we analyze two cooperative scenarios, in which the Nash bargaining model is utilized to implement profit sharing between the manufacturer and the retailer. Under the assumption that the manufacturer and the retailer are risk-neutral, we find that the manufacturer and the retailer can bargain to cooperate at any level of retail-market demand uncertainty with exogenous retail price. However, the cooperation is conditional on retail-market demand uncertainty with endogenous retail price: it can be implemented if the fluctuation of retail-market demand is relatively small, and the measure of retail-market demand uncertainty does not exceed an upper bound. Theoretical and numerical analyses show that the retailer's dominance over the manufacturer increases with the increase in the sensitivity of retailer's order quantity to manufacturer's wholesale price under a limitation of retail-market demand uncertainty. Numerical analyses also show that the retailer's dominance decreases with the increase in retail-market demand uncertainty.     

A Stochastic Inventory Model With Fast‐Ship Commitments

We present a multiperiod model of a retail supply chain, consisting of a single supplier and a single retailer, in which regular replenishment occurs periodically but players have the option to support fast delivery when customers experience a stockout during a replenishment period. Because expedited shipments increase the supplier's transportation cost, and possibly production/inventory costs, the supplier typically charges a markup over and above the prevailing wholesale price for fast‐shipped items. When fast shipping is not supported, items are backordered if customers are willing to wait until the start of the next replenishment period. We characterize the retailers and the supplier's optimal stocking and production policies and then utilize our analytical framework to study how the two players respond to changes in supply chain parameters. We identify a sufficient condition such that the centralized supply chain is better off with the fast‐ship option. We find a range of markups for fast‐ship orders such that the fast‐ship option is preferred by both the supplier and the retailer in a decentralized chain. However, a markup that is a win–win for both players may not exist even when offering fast‐ship option is better for the centralized chain. Our analysis also shows that depending on how the markup is determined, greater customer participation in fast‐ship orders does not necessarily imply more profits for the two players. For some predetermined markups, the retailer's profit with the fast‐ship option is higher when more customers are willing to wait. However, the retailer may not be able to benefit from the fast‐ship option because the supplier may choose not to support the fast‐ship option when fast‐ship participation increases due to the fact that the fast‐ship participation rate adversely affects the initial order size.     

公平感对供应链成员定价决策影响的研究

本文研究公平感对由一个供应商和一个零售商组成的二级供应链中的定价决策的影响,其中供应商决定批发价格,零售商在接受供应商批发价格合同之后决定零售价格,市场需求受到零售价格的线性影响.采用管理实验方法得出,首先,供应商的批发价格和零售商的零售价格均分别低于完全理性假设下的均衡解;供应商是利他性的,即,乐于看到零售商收益的增加,并且,供应商认为零售商是完全理性的,即零售商的决策目标是最大化自身收益;然而,零售商却是刻毒性的,即乐于看到供应商收益的减少.其次,批发价格的变异度大于零售价格的,即供应商决策的难度大于零售商的.给管理者的启示是:供应商应考虑零售商的刻毒性的特征,降低批发价格,以提高零售商接受供应商所提批发价格的概率;此外,还应该为供应商提供辅助决策手段,以降低批发价格的变异度,提高决策的准确性     

When Does a Retailer's Advance Selling Capability Benefit Manufacturer,Retailer, or Both?

Advance selling (AS) from a retailer to consumers is commonly observed in practice. With an AS capability, a retailer has the option to sell in advance or not. Having the AS option seems to increase flexibility and thus profit for a retailer. However, we show that the AS option can hurt the retailer's profit as well as supply chain performance. We identify two thresholds for a product's marginal production cost. A retailer's AS option benefits both the manufacturer and retailer when the marginal production cost is high, that is, above both thresholds. It benefits the manufacturer but hurts the retailer when the marginal production cost is moderate, that is, between the two thresholds. The result is ambiguous when the marginal production cost is low, that is, below both thresholds. We find that consumer valuation uncertainty under AS is the key driving force for the surprising result that having the retailer's AS option can hurt the retailer. When compared to the scenario where the retailer does not have the AS option, we find that the manufacturer's optimal wholesale price weakly decreases under the retailer's AS option if the marginal production cost is high. The statement is reversed if the marginal production cost is moderate or low.     

The Impact of External Demand Information on Parallel Supply Chains with Interacting Demand

This paper considers two parallel supply chains with interacting demand streams. Each supply chain consists of one supplier and one retailer. The two demand streams are jointly described with a vector autoregressive time‐series process in which they interact and their respective innovation errors correlate contemporaneously. For each supply chain, we develop insights into when and how much the supplier and the retailer can improve on their forecasting accuracy if the external demand history of the other supply chain is utilized. When this external demand history is not available or made available after a time lag, we develop a partial process and a delayed process to characterize the demand structure that the retailer can recover from the available demand histories. Our results show that the external demand history of the other supply chain always helps the retailer make better forecasts when demand streams interact; however, the enhanced information alters the retailer's order process, which may produce larger forecasting errors for the supplier. Conditions are established for the supplier to benefit from the external demand history of the other supply chain.     

Using Advance Purchase Discount Contracts under Uncertain Information Acquisition Cost

We study the use of advance purchase discount (APD) contracts to incentivize a retailer to share demand information with a dual‐sourcing wholesaler. We analyze such contracts in terms of two practical considerations that are relevant in this context but have been overlooked by previous work that has largely studied the direct offer of APD to customers: the retailer's information acquisition cost and the wholesaler's limited information about that cost. The wholesaler's limited knowledge of the retailer's cost leads to a departure—from the normal “full observability” APD design—that is asymmetric and depends on the extent of unobservability; if the uncertainty is small (resp., large) then the optimal discount is higher (resp., lower) than in the case of full observability. An APD contract that ignores the retailer's cost or the wholesaler's uncertainty about it will yield fewer benefits for the wholesaler and the supply chain. We offer a numerical illustration (calibrated on real industry data) establishing that for a representative product, an APD contract can improve the wholesaler's profit margin by as much as 3.5%.     

The Roles of Bank and Trade Credits: Theoretical Analysis and Empirical Evidence

This study investigates the roles of bank and trade credits in a supply chain with a capital‐constrained retailer facing demand uncertainty. We evaluate the retailer's optimal order quantity and the creditors' optimal credit limits and interest rates in two scenarios. In the single‐credit scenario, we find the retailer prefers trade credit, if the trade credit market is more competitive than the bank credit market; otherwise, the retailer's preference of a specific credit type depends on the risk levels that the retailer would divert trade credit and bank credit to other risky investments. In the dual‐credit scenario, if the bank credit market is more competitive than the trade credit market, the retailer first borrows bank credit prior to trade credit, but then switches to borrowing trade credit prior to bank credit as the retailer's internal capital declines. In contrast, if the trade credit market is more competitive, the retailer borrows only trade credit. We further analytically prove that the two credits are complementary if the retailer's internal capital is substantially low but become substitutable as the internal capital grows, and then empirically validate this prediction based on a panel of 674 firms in China over the period 2001–2007.     

产能不确定供应商的风险厌恶行为对供应链的影响

针对具有产能不确定性的风险厌恶供应商和风险中性零售商组成的供应链系统,本文采用经典的风险指标Value-at-risk(VaR)衡量供应商的风险厌恶程度,并将其作为供应商的优化约束条件之一。在斯坦伯格顺序博弈的模型框架下,零售商做定价和订货量决策,供应商做批发价决策。本文求得供应商批发价在VaR约束下的理论上下界,研究了风险厌恶程度对最优批发价的影响。与风险中性环境下的结果相比,在设立合理目标利润的前提下,高风险厌恶程度可能使得供应商提高批发价,低风险厌恶程度则对供应商批发价无影响。当目标利润设立很高时,供应商为了逐利将会降低批发价诱导零售商提高订货量。     

Value of and Interaction between Production Postponement and Information Sharing Strategies for Supply Chain Firms

We analyze the value of and interaction between production postponement and information sharing, which are two distinct strategies to reduce manufacturers’ uncertainty about demand. In both single‐level and two‐level supply chains, from the manufacturer's perspective, while information sharing is always valuable, production postponement can sometimes be detrimental. Furthermore, the value of production postponement is not merely driven by savings in inventory holding cost as postponement enables the manufacturer to avoid both excess and shortfall in production. We find that production postponement and information sharing strategies may substitute, complement, or conflict with each other, depending on the extent of the increase in the unit production cost when production is postponed. In a two‐level supply chain, from the retailer's perspective, information sharing and production postponement can be beneficial or detrimental. When information sharing is beneficial to the retailer, the retailer always shares her demand information with the manufacturer voluntarily. In addition, this voluntary information sharing is truthful because inflated or deflated demand information hurts the retailer through a higher wholesale price or a stock‐out. However, the retailer never shares her demand information voluntarily if the manufacturer has already adopted production postponement because production postponement and information sharing strategies always conflict with each other. Even when the retailer does not benefit from information sharing, we show that the manufacturer can always design an incentive mechanism to induce the retailer to share the demand information, irrespective of whether the manufacturer has already implemented production postponement or not. The above findings underscore the need for a careful assessment of demand uncertainty‐reduction strategies before the supply chain players embark upon them.     

Distributional and Peer‐Induced Fairness in Supply Chain Contract Design

Members of a supply chain often make profit comparisons. A retailer exhibits peer‐induced fairness concerns when his own profit is behind that of a peer retailer interacting with the same supplier. In addition, a retailer exhibits distributional fairness when his supplier's share of total profit is larger than his own. While existing research focuses exclusively on distributional fairness concerns, this study investigates how both types of fairness might interact and influence economic outcomes in a supply chain. We consider a one‐supplier and two‐retailer supply chain setting, and we show that (i) in the presence of distributional fairness alone, the wholesale price offer is lower than the standard wholesale price offer; (ii) in the presence of both types of fairness, the second wholesale price is higher than the first wholesale price; and (iii) in the presence of both types of fairness, the second retailer makes a lower profit and has a lower share of the total supply chain profit than the first retailer. We run controlled experiments with subjects motivated by substantial monetary incentives and show that subject behaviors are consistent with the model predictions. Structural estimation on the data suggests that peer‐induced fairness is more salient than distributional fairness.     

Competing for Shelf Space

In recent years, the competition for shelf space has intensified, as more products now compete for a retail space that has remained roughly constant. In this paper, we analyze the dynamics of this competition in a multi‐supplier retail point. Assuming that sales are shelf space dependent, we consider a retailer that optimizes its shelf space allocation among different products based on their sales level and profit margins. In this context, product manufacturers set their wholesale prices so as to obtain larger shelf space allocations but at the same time keep margins as high as possible. We analyze the equilibrium situation in the supply chain, and find that generally the retailer's and the suppliers' incentives are misaligned, resulting in suboptimal retail prices and shelf space allocations. We however find that the inefficiencies induced by suboptimal shelf space allocation decisions are small relative to those induced by suboptimal pricing decisions.     

Sourcing Decisions with Stochastic Supplier Reliability and Stochastic Demand

Supplier sourcing strategies are a crucial factor driving supply chain success. In this paper, we investigate the implications of uncertain supplier reliability on a firm's sourcing decisions in an environment with stochastic demand. In particular, we characterize specific conditions under which a firm should choose a single versus multiple supplier sourcing strategy. In an environment with both uncertain demand and supply, we characterize the total order quantity, the number of suppliers selected for order placement, and the allocation of the total order quantity among these selected suppliers. For deeper managerial insight, we also examine the sensitivity of the optimal sourcing decisions to interactions between uncertainties in product demand and supply reliability. We show that sourcing from a single supplier is an optimal strategy for environments characterized by high levels of demand uncertainty or high salvage values. A numerical analysis based on data obtained from an office products retailer further reinforces our analytical results. In addition, we also find that when minimal order quantities are imposed, there are situations where it is not optimal to place an order with the lowest cost supplier.     

Pricing Policy in a Supply Chain: Negotiation or Posted Pricing

This article examines the choice of pricing policy (posted pricing or negotiation) toward end customers in a supply chain. Many retailers actively decide whether or not to encourage negotiation on the shop floor. Of course, the retailer's pricing policy influences not only the retailer's profit, but also the profits of the manufacturers who sell through the retailer. However, little is known about the forces that shape the pricing policy when two self‐interested parties interact in a supply chain. We consider two alternative models depending on who has the power to decide the pricing policy: the manufacturer or the retailer. We find that an increase in the wholesale price weakens the retailer's ability to price discriminate through negotiation. Therefore, the retailer prefers negotiation at lower wholesale prices and posted pricing at higher wholesale prices. We also find that whenever the retailer prefers negotiation, the manufacturer does too. Therefore, the retailer's discretion over the pricing policy causes friction only when the retailer wants to use posted pricing, while the manufacturer wishes the retailer to use negotiation. We show that such friction arises only when product availability or the cost of negotiation is moderate. In this case, we show that the manufacturer may offer a substantial discount to persuade the retailer to negotiate. Surprisingly, in this region of friction, a decrease in the supply chain's capacity or an increase in negotiation costs (both of which are typically considered as worsening the retailer's business environment) translates into higher profit for the retailer.     

基于决策者风险规避特性的供应链需求信息共享价值分析

在随机需求条件下,利用条件风险估值(conditional value-at-risk,CVaR)的风险度量准则建立了供应链的需求信息共享决策模型,着重分析了零售商的风险规避程度以及市场需求的不确定性信息对供应链各决策者以及供应链整体信息共享价值的影响。研究结果表明,需求信息共享价值与零售商的风险规避程度、市场不确定性大小以及市场不确定信息所预测的市场需求变化情况有关。数值分析结果表明,零售商越害怕市场的不确定性风险,需求信息共享越有利于提升分散供应链的运作效率;但当市场信息反映出未来的市场需求是消极且零售商接近风险中性时,供应链的需求信息共享价值反而小于零,此时没有进行信息共享的必要。     

Strategic Sourcing in the Presence of Uncertain Supply and Retail Competition

This study develops an analytical model to evaluate competing retail firms' sourcing strategies in the presence of supply uncertainty. We consider a common supplier that sells its uncertain supply to two downstream retail firms engaging in price competition in a horizontally differentiated product market. The focal firm has a dual‐sourcing option, while the rival firm can only source from the common supplier. We assess the system‐wide effects of supply uncertainty on the focal firm's incentive to pursue the dual‐sourcing strategy. We find that the focal firm's dual‐sourcing strategy can create a win–win situation that leads to increased retail prices and expected profits for both firms. Furthermore, under certain conditions, we show that it is beneficial for the focal firm to strategically source from the common supplier, even if its alternative supplier offers a lower wholesale price. Overall, we identify two types of incentives for adopting the dual‐sourcing strategy: the incentive of mitigating supply risk through supplier diversification and the incentive of strategic sourcing for more effective retail competition.