股权融资下企业市场竞争策略选择的模型研究

企业市场竞争策略的制定不仅应考虑竞争双方运营层面的因素,还应重视其资本运作带来的影响。本文构建了零售商采取股权融资进行市场开拓的市场竞争模型,探讨其市场竞争策略选择及其影响因素。研究发现：零售商的市场竞争策略取决于其成长性和市场开拓的外部性;提高成长性或外部性均能促进企业的股权融资,而企业原股东的委托代理行为会抑制股权融资,并影响其市场开拓决策,但不会定性改变企业的价格竞争策略。此外,当市场开拓呈现负外部性时,竞争者应采取相应措施以避免掉入“融资企业成长性陷阱”。     

供应链视角下成长型企业融资方式选择:债权融资VS股权融资

优序融资理论从企业价值和资本成本的角度指出企业融资应遵循内源融资、债权融资和股权融资的顺序。当企业的融资与运营相结合时，成长型企业的融资方式选择与优序融资理论有何异同?文章构建了供应链视角下成长型零售商的债权和股权融资模型，探讨其在快速发展过程中的最优融资方式。核心的发现是：供应链合作、企业的成长性和估值水平均会影响企业的融资方式选择。在供应链不合作下，被高估的零售商以及被低估的高成长性零售商应选择股权融资，被低估的中或低成长性零售商应遵循优序融资理论选择债权融资；在供应链合作下，零售商的市场成长性主导了其融资方式，估值水平仅对部分中等成长性零售商的融资方式产生影响。     

对赌协议该签吗? 企业股权融资的运营分析

股权融资是成长型企业捕获成长机会、获得跨越式发展的重要手段,然而在股权融资过程中是否应该签订对赌协议这一问题长期困扰着企业家．以企业价值创造与供需匹配的运营视角研究了零售商与私募股权投资机构(PE)之间的对赌问题,分别基于零售商风险规避和模糊规避两种决策行为构建了有无对赌协议的效用模型,刻画并对比了对赌对两种行为零售商的决策、效用等多方面的影响．研究发现,尽管风险规避行为下零售商的决策更为保守,但两种行为都存在“对赌协议签订区间”使得对赌协议有助于提升投融资双方的运作效用．特别地,企业成长性是签订对赌协议的关键因素,当企业成长性较高时应该签订对赌协议,若成长性不足,则应考虑企业估值和运营的利润率情况,从而决定是否签订对赌协议．     

零售商股权融资的供应链契约结构分析

契约是促成供应链企业战略合作的重要纽带，在股权融资背景下有着新的内涵。本文研究了零售商股权融资时供应链的运作问题，刻画了契约结构对零售商股权融资的影响，建立了两类不同契约结构下的供应链运作模型。研究发现，零售商的股权融资行为极大地受到契约结构的影响：一方面，供应商主导的契约结构严重阻碍了零售商的股权融资意愿，不利于企业发展。另一方面，通过一类契约锁定协议可以提升零售商的融资意愿，实现多方共赢。揭示了契约结构在股权融资过程中的重要作用。     

供应链视角下零售商股权融资最优估值模型

股权融资激活了成长型企业协同供应链上下游捕获发展机会的能力，而基于市场套利定价理论的估值未能缓解投融资双方不断涌现的估值冲突，使得股权融资的合理估值探索显得愈发迫切。因此，为刻画供应链与博弈新视角下的股权投融资本质特征，构建了零售商股权融资模型，分析了新战略视角下缓和估值冲突的合作共赢空间，进一步探讨了股权融资战略中合理估值存在性，核心研究发现是，零售商股权融资中存在能协调各参与方利益的“合作估值区间”与最优估值，且最优估值受零售商在供应链结构地位的影响。     

不同决策目标下受资金约束零售商的最优采购策略研究

在提前订购和延时采购两种情景下，分别考虑最大化期望收益和最小化违约概率两种决策目标，对受资金约束零售商的最优采购量和相匹配的融资策略进行分析，结果表明，相比于以最大化期望收益为决策目标，以最小化违约概率为决策目标的零售商在提前订购中将奉行"保守"的采购量和融资策略（仅耗尽自有资金量采购而不融资），而在延时采购中采取"激进"的采购量和融资策略（与最大化期望收益下一致）；在此基础上，对不同决策目标下受资金约束零售商的最优采购时机问题进行研究发现，在最大化期望收益下，零售商的最优采购时机由产品采购成本、市场容量均值、市场容量方差、自有资金量、银行贷款利率等多个参数共同决定，而在最小化违约概率下，零售商将始终选择延时采购。     

基于产品责任的零售商主导供应链质量成本分担合同研究

基于以零售商为主导的两级供应链，在供应商产品质量缺陷对消费者造成效用损失，并导致零售商承担产品责任的情形下，考虑了如何设计质量成本分担合同以激励产品质量水平的提升。基于此，考虑了两种质量成本分担比例(合同)决策模式(即零售商决策和纳什讨价还价决策),构建了供应链动态博弈模型，考察了责任成本对供应链质量决策和企业利润的影响机理，并揭示了不同质量成本分担比例决策模式对供应链均衡结果差异的策略性机理。结果表明：(1)在分散化下，当供应商质量投资效率较高(较低)时，其产品质量随责任成本的增加而增加(减小);而在质量成本分担合同下，随着责任成本的增加，最优质量成本分担比例随之增加，而产品质量随之先提高后降低。(2)质量成本分担有助于产品质量、零售商利润和供应链系统利润的提高，而供应商利润在纳什讨价还价决策模式下将提高，但在零售商决策模式下，当责任成本较小时其反而将降低。(3)相对于零售商决策模式而言，在纳什讨价还价决策模式下，最优质量成本分担比例、产品质量和零售商利润均相对较低，但供应商利润和供应链系统利润均相对较高。     

资金约束与供应链中的融资和运营综合决策研究

研究了由单一供应商和单一零售商组成的供应链中金融和运营的综合决策问题及其影响.当零售商存在资金限制/约束时,其可从资本市场获得融资服务以实现自身的最优采购.其中资本市场是指由多个追求风险中性的金融机构组成的,并存在一定的市场竞争.研究表明:当零售商出现资金不足或预算限制时,融资服务可为整个供应链创造新价值,并且资本市场的竞争程度将直接影响零售商、供应商和金融机构的具体决策.另外,还为具体供应链管理实践提供相关的见识.     

竞争环境下网络零售商线下渠道策略研究

网络零售商是否选择开设线下渠道是其面临的重要决策问题.本文考虑竞争环境下网络零售商是否开设线下渠道问题,重点关注其是否开设线下展厅及是否提供产品销售策略.为此,首先分别考虑两个零售商不提供展厅策略、同时提供展厅策略、同时提供展厅策略并销售产品三种情形,并进一步考虑仅有一个零售商开设展厅策略的情形,建立相应的决策模型.研究发现：1)零售商是否提供展厅策略与市场中具有较高旅行成本的消费者比例、市场竞争程度及展厅建设成本具有显著的关联性;2)当零售商提供展厅策略时,其是否进行产品销售与线下渠道的消费者比例具有显著的关联性;3)产品退货率高低与消费者交叉展厅行为对零售商是否提供展厅策略具有一定的影响.本文的研究对电商企业及网络零售商的渠道选择决策提供了科学的决策依据.     

竞争环境下主导电子零售商的销售模式选择和信息共享策略

考虑由单一供应商、单一电子零售商和单一传统零售商组成的供应链，研究了占主导地位的电子零售商的在线销售模式(转售和代理销售)选择及信息共享策略。首先，针对两种在线销售模式，构建了信息共享和不共享情形下以供应链成员利润最大化为目标的优化模型，并通过求解模型得到了供应链成员的均衡定价和订货策略；然后，比较了不同策略组合下供应链各成员的期望利润，分析了各成员的信息共享策略偏好以及电子零售商的销售模式选择策略。研究表明：1)在转售模式下，当市场需求波动程度较小时，信息共享会增加电子零售商的利润，降低供应商和传统零售商的利润；当波动程度较大时，则相反；当市场需求波动处于中等水平时，电子零售商不共享信息能使供应商、电子零售商和传统零售商达成三赢局面。2)在代理销售模式下，信息共享能增加传统零售商的利润，但不一定能增加供应商和电子零售商的利润。只有佣金费率较低，高市场类型的概率较低且市场需求波动不大时，信息共享才是电子零售商的最优策略。3)主导电子零售商应该选择转售模式。本文的研究可为主导电商企业销售模式选择和信息分享决策提供理论依据;为相关零售企业在不同策略组合下定价和订货决策提供支持。     

Joint Pricing and Contingent Free-Shipping Decisions in B2C Transactions

We consider an online retailer's joint pricing and contingent free-shipping (CFS) decisions in both monopoly and duopoly structures, which is an important marketing-operations interface problem. We begin by investigating the impacts of a retailer's decisions on consumers' purchase behaviors, and show that the CFS strategy is useful to acquire the consumers with large order sizes. Then, we compute the probability of repeated purchases, and construct an expected profit function for an online retailer in the monopolistic setting. We find that the fixed shipping fees may have the largest impact on the retailer's profit among all shipping-related parameters, and the retailer can benefit more from homogeneous markets than from heterogeneous ones. Next, we consider the competition between two retailers in the duopoly structure, and analytically show that, if two retailers have identical fixed and variable shipping fees, then their equilibrium decisions are equal. In order to numerically find a Nash equilibrium for two retailers, we develop a simulation approach using Arena and OptQuest. Our simulation-based examples suggest that, as a result of the competition, the two retailers should decrease their profit margins but increase their CFS cutoff levels if they have the same fixed and also the same variable shipping fees.     

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.     

Supply Chain Design and Carbon Penalty: Monopoly vs. Monopolistic Competition

This paper studies whether imposing carbon costs changes the supply chain structure and social welfare. We explore the problem from a central policymaker's perspective who wants to maximize social welfare. We consider two stakeholders, retailers, and consumers, who optimize their own objectives (i.e., profits and net utility) and three competitive settings (i.e., monopoly, monopolistic competition with symmetric market share, and monopolistic competition with asymmetric market share). For the monopoly case, we find that when the retailer's profit is high, imposing some carbon emission charges on the retailer and the consumers does not substantially change the supply chain structure or the social welfare. However, when the retailer's profit is low, imposing carbon costs optimally can lead to a significant increase in social welfare. Moreover, the impact of imposing carbon emission charges becomes more significant when the degree of competition increases. Additionally, the quantum of benefit may depend only on factors common across industries, such as fuel and carbon costs.     

The Retail Space‐Exchange Problem with Pricing and Space Allocation Decisions

We consider retail space‐exchange problems where two retailers exchange shelf space to increase accessibility to more of their consumers in more locations without opening new stores. Using the Hotelling model, we find two retailers’ optimal prices, given their host and guest space in two stores under the space‐exchange strategy. Next, using the optimal space‐dependent prices, we analyze a non‐cooperative game, where each retailer makes a space allocation decision for the retailer's own store. We show that the two retailers will implement such a strategy in the game, if and only if their stores are large enough to serve more than one‐half of their consumers. Nash equilibrium for the game exists, and its value depends on consumers’ utilities and trip costs as well as the total available space in each retailer's store. Moreover, as a result of the space‐exchange strategy, each retailer's prices in two stores are both higher than the retailer's price before the space exchange, but they may or may not be identical.     

Strategic Motive for Introducing Internet Channels in a Supply Chain

Rapid advances of information technology in recent years have enabled both the manufacturers and the retailers to operate their own Internet channels. In this study, we investigate the interaction between the capabilities of introducing the Internet channels, the pricing strategies, and the channel structure. We classify consumers into two segments: grocery shoppers attach a higher utility from purchasing through the physical channel, whereas a priori Internet shoppers prefer purchasing online. We find that when the Internet shoppers are either highly profitable or fairly unimportant, the manufacturer prefers to facilitate the channel separation either through his own Internet channel or the retailer's. In the intermediate region, however, the manufacturer encroaches the grocery shoppers and steals the demand from the retailer's physical channel. With horizontal competition between retailers, a priori symmetric retailers may adopt different channel strategies as a stable market equilibrium. The manufacturer may willingly give up his Internet channel and leverage on the retailer competition. When the manufacturer sells through an online e‐tailer, Internet shoppers may be induced to purchase through the physical channel. This reverse encroachment strategy emerges because selling through the e‐tailer leads to a more severe double marginalization problem.     

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.     

Markdown Budgets for Retail Buyers: Help or Hindrance?

For many retailers, markdown decisions are taken by retail buyers whose compensation is based on sales revenue so their objective is to maximize it through the season. This implies that the buyers' objectives are not perfectly aligned with the overall profitability the firm. Many retailers set markdown budgets prior to the season to control margin erosion and increase profitability. Markdown budget constrains the buyers on the amount of discounts that they can apply on a given inventory of merchandise and sets a limit on the dollar value of markdowns for the season. While markdown budgets may be useful in preventing excessive discounts, they can have a detrimental effect on the buyers' ability to respond to poor market and remove distressed inventory. We investigate the effectiveness of this practice in aligning the incentives of buyers with that of the firm, and provide guidance on how these budgets should be established ahead of time. We consider a firm with a fixed inventory of a seasonable item, and a single chance to mark the price down. The retailer knows only the demand distribution at the beginning of the season, but the market information is revealed during the season to the buyer. We first characterize the buyer's markdown policy and understand the circumstances under which this can be different from the retailer's markdown policy. We use our model to determine the optimal markdown budget and quantify its effectiveness considering different factors such as the level of demand uncertainty, initial markup, and market's responsiveness to markdowns.     

A WTP‐Choice Model: Empirical Validation,Competitive and Centralized Pricing

Willingness To Pay (WTP) of customers plays an anchoring role in pricing. This study proposes a new choice model based on WTP, incorporating sequential decision making, where the products with positive utility of purchase are considered in the order of customer preference. We compare WTP‐choice model with the commonly used (multinomial) Logit model with respect to the underlying choice process, information requirement, and independence of irrelevant alternatives. Using WTP‐choice model, we find and compare equilibrium and centrally optimal prices and profits without considering inventory availability. In addition, we compare equilibrium prices and profits in two contexts: without considering inventory availability and under lost sales. One of the interesting results with WTP‐choice model is the “loose coupling” of retailers in competition; prices are not coupled but profits are. That is, each retailer should charge the monopoly price as the collection of these prices constitute an equilibrium but each retailer's profit depends on other retailers' prices. Loose coupling fails with dependence of WTPs or dependence of preference on prices. Also, we show that competition among retailers facing dependent WTPs can cause price cycles under some conditions. We consider real‐life data on sales of yogurt, ketchup, candy melt, and tuna, and check if a version of WTP‐choice model (with uniform, triangle, or shifted exponential WTP distribution), standard or mixed Logit model fits better and predicts the sales better. These empirical tests establish that WTP‐choice model compares well and should be considered as a legitimate alternative to Logit models for studying pricing for products with low price and high frequency of purchase.