双渠道供应链中的牛鞭效应分析

研究价格参考效应对双渠道供应链中牛鞭效应的影响．考虑由一个制造商和一个双渠道零售商构成的两级供应链网络,基于价格信息对称下消费者的价格参考行为,构建了双渠道零售商的市场需求函数,并分析补充至目标库存策略和移动平均预测技术下的牛鞭效应及其减弱控制措施．研究表明：１）价格参考效应可能会抑制双渠道供应链的牛鞭效应,但却无法完 全消除牛鞭效应;２）双渠道供应链中价格自回归度高的商品具有更小的牛鞭效应;３）当线上市场价格波动相对较大时,线上（下）市场的价格参考系数越小（大）,则双渠道供应链的牛鞭效应越小．     

需求信息预测与处理中的牛鞭效应分析与控制

研究了不稳定的市场需求下一个生产商和一个零售商所组成的两层次的简单供应链系统.提出当零售商预测信息的过程中并不存在牛鞭效应现象,而在生产商和零售商利用库存策略处理需求信息的过程中却显著存在牛鞭效应现象.证明了利用信息共享的方式可以控制牛鞭效应,但不能完全消除牛鞭效应.     

需求不确定下制造商服务投入影响销售的供应链信息共享与激励

针对需求不确定环境下制造商既提供产品也提供相关服务时产品服务供应链中的信息共享与激励问题，考虑零售商拥有需求预测信息且可选择共享任意水平的信息量，通过构建不完全信息下的动态博弈模型，分析了零售商信息共享水平、制造商服务效率以及消费者服务敏感性对服务价值和信息共享价值的影响，并提出了基于两部补偿契约的信息共享激励策略。研究表明：需求信息共享能够有效提升整个供应链的服务价值；当制造商服务效率或者消费者服务敏感性较高时，信息共享的服务改善效应将占优于其双边际效应，零售商会自愿共享全部需求信息并达到供应链"双赢"；而当制造商服务效率或者消费者服务敏感性较低时，采用两部补偿激励契约可实现产品服务供应链中的完全信息共享，并且契约实施难度会随着零售商需求预测精度、制造商服务效率以及消费者服务敏感性的提高而降低。     

基于ARMA（1，1）需求的供应链历史订单量信息价值的分析

牛鞭效应和供应链成本是目前供应链管理中值得关注的两个问题,本文通过分析ARMA(1,1)需求条件下的供应链历史订单量信息对牛鞭效应和制造商平均成本的影响,得出历史订单量信息的充分利用可以减小牛鞭效应、降低供应链成本.本文研究表明,如果充分利用历史订单量信息,则需求信息共享对供应链的贡献就不会有目前所认为的那么显著,其中的部分贡献可以由历史订单量信息来承担.因此,历史订单量信息的充分利用可以在一定程度上减少为寻求供应链需求信息共享而付出的投资费用.     

制造商成本削减策略对风险规避型零售商信息共享策略的影响

考虑一个风险中性制造商和一个风险规避零售商构成的供应链，需求随机且受销售价格的影响。在销售季节之前，零售商对需求进行预测，获取需求信号；制造商对生产进行投资降低生产成本。基于零售商的不同信息共享策略及制造商的投资策略，考虑四种不同策略模型，分别得到最优零售价、批发价（及投资水平），并分析需求预测精确度对供应链成员决策和效用的影响。通过四种模型效用的对比分析，探讨制造商的投资策略以及零售商的风险规避态度对零售商信息共享策略的影响。研究发现，零售商共享需求信息对于制造商总是有益的，且制造商总是愿意采取成本削减策略；只有当制造商采取成本削减策略，且其投资成本系数较低时，共享需求信息对零售商才有益。最后，得到了制造商和零售商的均衡策略。     

基于APIOBPCS模式VMI下牛鞭效应仿真研究

运用系统动力学构建基于APIOBPCS采购模式和供应商管理库存的七成员供应链模型,通过该模型研究8个因素对牛鞭效应的影响.研究表明,平滑指数越小牛鞭效应越弱:库存初始值影响牛鞭效应的具体数值,但不能根本改变牛鞭效应;牛鞭效应受APIOBPCS模式库存调节系数影响巨大,DE-APIOBPCS模式下牛鞭效应相对较弱;在库存调节系数设定为1、某成员的所有下游成员提前期已经确定的前提下,该成员需求的标准方差只与紧邻上游成员的提前期有关,其余成员的提前期对该成员需求标准方差没有影响;库存检查周期越短牛鞭效应越弱;在供应链信息共享以及成员合作的前提下,瓶颈取适当值情况下的牛鞭效应与没有瓶颈情况下的牛鞭效应相比,前者更小;最低采购数量影响牛鞭效应,并且牛鞭效应对此因素表现出比较强的敏感性.     

非平稳需求状态下虚拟企业牛鞭效应的存在性分析

本文从供应链管理的角度出发,将牛鞭效应的概念和模型引入虚拟企业的运营过程中,运用可变系数的自回归移动平均(ARIMA)模型对虚拟企业上下游成员企业需求信息进行预测,研究非平稳需求状态下虚拟企业内上下游企业订货水平的差异,证明了虚拟企业运营中牛鞭效应的存在性,最后提出除虚拟企业的敏捷经营、信息共享对牛鞭效应的影响以外,需求的波动也是影响牛鞭效应的重要因素,并讨论了信息完全共享的情况下牛鞭效应存在的条件.     

考虑制造商创新的供应链双向需求信息共享研究

本文考虑制造商创新，研究由一个制造商和一个零售商组成的两级供应链双向需求信息共享问题。制造商与零售商均拥有部分需求信息，且制造商进行成本降低创新，根据逆向分析求解方法分析制造商与零售商在均不共享、制造商单方共享、零售商单方共享、相互共享需求信息情形下的均衡决策，并分别通过求解制造商和零售商的事前利润来探讨制造商与零售商的需求信息共享价值。研究发现：制造商在四种需求信息共享情形下的创新投资增量均与获取的需求信息正相关，而与创新系数负相关。制造商的需求信息共享价值在制造商单方共享和互共享需求信息情形下总为负，在零售商单方共享情形下总为正。零售商的需求信息共享价值随着制造商创新能力的增强由负变正。本文在供应链双向需求信息共享的研究中引入制造商创新，拓展了相关研究，具有一定的理论价值和实践意义。     

信息共享条件下供应链在线与传统销售渠道协调定价

研究了市场需求信息更新条件下,具有传统和在线销售的供应链双源渠道协调问题。建立了以制造商为主方,零售商为从方的Stackelberg主从对策模型,该模型实质是制造商在线销售价格与零售商传统销售价格之间协调;给出了需求信息共享和非共享两种情况下的供应链最优协调价格策略;分析了需求预测信息对供应链最优协调价格策略及其利润的影响;最后进行了数值计算,探讨了需求信息参数对供应链及其成员利润的影响。结果表明,信息共享下的供应链及其成员利润要高于非信息共享情况,而且,越精确的需求预测将导致更高的利润。     

在ARIMA(0,1,1)需求下的牛鞭效应与信息共享的评价

本文考虑一个包含一个供应商和一个零售商的两级供应链,研究在需求模型ARIMA(0,1,1)下牛鞭效应的量化和信息共享的价值,比较信息共享之前和之后的差异,其结果表明信息共享能给供应商带来减轻牛鞭效应、减少现有平均库存以及降低成本等好处。     

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.     

Dynamic Pricing,Production, and Channel Coordination with Stochastic Learning

We consider a decentralized two‐period supply chain in which a manufacturer produces a product with benefits of cost learning, and sells it through a retailer facing a price‐dependent demand. The manufacturer's second‐period production cost declines linearly in the first‐period production, but with a random learning rate. The manufacturer may or may not have the inventory carryover option. We formulate the resulting problems as two‐period Stackelberg games and obtain their feedback equilibrium solutions explicitly. We then examine the impact of mean learning rate and learning rate variability on the pricing strategies of the channel members, on the manufacturer's production decisions, and on the retailer's procurement decisions. We show that as the mean learning rate or the learning rate variability increases, the traditional double marginalization problem becomes more severe, leading to greater efficiency loss in the channel. We obtain revenue sharing contracts that can coordinate the dynamic supply chain. In particular, when the manufacturer may hold inventory, we identify two major drivers for inventory carryover: market growth and learning rate variability. Finally, we demonstrate the robustness of our results by examining a model in which cost learning takes place continuously.     

Supplier Encroachment and Investment Spillovers

It is conventional wisdom that a manufacturer's encroachment into retail space will likely hurt an existing retailer. In contrast to this conventional belief, current research indicates that a retailer may welcome a manufacturer's encroachment despite the new competition in the final market. The encroachment may help the manufacturer have some “skin in the game” at the retail level, which will cause the manufacturer to make a selfish cost‐reducing investment that spills over to the retailer as a lower wholesale price. Such a spillover effect enhances the retailer's profit as long as the encroachment does not result in extreme retail competition by a certain degree of product differentiation, and ultimately generates Pareto gains in the supply chain. The spillover effect is so robust that the retailer's benefit from the encroachment remains even after considering potential mitigating factors such as selling costs, a nonlinear form of cost reduction, decentralized encroachment, additional retail competition, price competition, and a negotiation between the manufacturer and the retailer.     

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.     

Technical Note—Demand Uncertainty Reduction in Decentralized Supply Chains

This note analyzes the effects associated with reducing demand uncertainty in a decentralized supply chain comprising one manufacturer, one retailer, and a wholesale price contract that governs the transactions between them. The demand uncertainty level is parameterized through a mean‐preserving spread, and the manufacturer's and the retailer's equilibrium decisions are solved accordingly. We consider the case of an exogenous retail price as well as the case of an endogenous retail price, and we find in both cases that the manufacturer's and the retailer's expected profits in equilibrium are not necessarily monotone decreasing in the uncertainty level. Thus, we find that, even if the cost of reducing demand uncertainty is zero, uncertainty reduction can hurt rather than benefit either or both members of the supply chain.     

Supply Chain Conflict Due to Store Brands: The Value of Wholesale Price Commitment in a Retail Supply Chain*

Store brands are of increasing importance in retail supply chains, often causing channel conflict, as the retailer's product directly competes with the manufacturer's national brand. Extant research on the resulting channel interactions either assumes the national brand manufacturer can credibly commit to maintaining a wholesale price or that he lacks such ability. However, these two scenarios imply very different supply chain interactions, as only a national brand manufacturer with commitment ability can strategically adjust a national brand wholesale price to prevent a store brand introduction by the retailer. We specifically analyze the impact of this assumption on the manufacturer, the retailer, and the customers. We determine when long‐term contracts that provide the manufacturer with such commitment ability can improve supply chain profitability.     

Implications for the Role of Retailers in Quality Assurance

We investigate a manufacturer–retailer channel to explore the role of a retailer in assuring the quality of a manufacturer's product as a quality gatekeeper. Such a gatekeeping activity can entail a reduction in the defective rate for consumers, if the retailer charges the manufacturer a penalty for each identified defect that is no smaller than the market penalty for an unidentified defect. As a result of the retailer's gatekeeping, the change in the negotiated wholesale price only depends on the manufacturer's individual benefit, whereas the change in the retailer's optimal retail price is associated with the channel‐wide benefit. When the impact of quality relative to retail price on demand is higher, the retailer benefits more from her gatekeeping activity, thus having a greater incentive to take on the quality gatekeeping responsibility. Moreover, the retailer's gatekeeping generates a larger increase in the demand as well as each firm's profit, when the retailer has a stronger relative bargaining power.     

The Effect of Delayed Incentives on Supply Chain Profits and Consumer Surplus

We examine the use of consumer cash mail‐in rebates offered by a manufacturer in a Stackelberg game where the manufacturer is the leader and the retailer is the follower. Our analysis indicates that rebates are profitable for manufacturers if consumers are inconsistent in the sense that their rebate valuation when they make purchase decisions is independent of their redemption probabilities when they make redemption decisions. If the manufacturer keeps the wholesale price unchanged, then the rebate increases the retailer's profit by a larger amount than the increase in the manufacturer's profit. If the manufacturer jointly optimizes the wholesale price and rebate, then the increase in the manufacturer's profit is twice the increase in the retailer's profit. The retailer responds to rebates by increasing the retail price, which increases the margin paid by consumers who do not redeem the rebate. On average, consumer surplus decreases when it is optimal for manufacturers to offer rebates. We suggest incentive schemes that make it worthwhile for retailers to limit the price increase. In these incentive schemes, the manufacturer imposes a negative relationship between the rebate value and the retail price. We show that such incentives increase supply chain profits.     

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 Dynamics of Domestic Gray Markets and Its Impact on Supply Chains

Gray markets are created by unauthorized retailers selling manufacturer's branded products. Similar to international gray markets, domestic gray markets are a growing phenomenon whose impact on supply chains is not clear. We consider a supply chain with one manufacturer and several authorized retailers who face a newsvendor problem and a domestic gray market. While a gray market provides an opportunity for retailers to clear their excess inventory (inventory‐correction effect), it also can be a threat to their demand (demand‐cannibalization effect). We first characterize the emerging equilibrium by assuming an MSRP environment. Comparing a decentralized and centralized system, we show that a wholesale pricing contract is quite efficient in a gray market environment; we explain the underlying mechanism and note some of the operational decisions that could hurt that efficiency. We show that the gray market price determines the degree of both the negative effects of demand‐cannibalization and the positive effects of inventory correction, which in turn determines the net impact of gray markets on the retailer's stocking choice and, ultimately, the manufacturer's profit. We then study the authorized retailers' problem as a price‐setting newsvendor. We observe that the gray market creates price competition between the authorized and unauthorized retailers, causing a drop in the primary market price. However, this price competition can be counteracted by the authorized retailers' stocking decision. Finally, we extend our model to consider the cases where the demand can be correlated across retailers.