Impact of Distribution Channel Innovation on the Performance of Small and Medium Enterprises

Impact of innovation in distribution channel functions on firm performance, particularly among export-oriented, agro-based small and medium enterprises (SMEs) is under researched. Based on this literature gap, the present study examines the impact of distribution channel innovation on SMEs performance in Indonesia. A total of 120 samples were collected from export-oriented, agro based manufacturing SMEs in Yogyakarta and the surrounding areas, Java. Using a regression analysis, the findings show that innovation in assortment, information sharing and transportation coordination had positive and significant relationships with firm performance. This study also found that distribution channel effectiveness mediated the relationship between innovation in assortment and transportation coordination and firm performance. All this finding is crucial for firms, who intend to remain competitive in the global market. Future studies, however, should consider many other factors that may influence firm performance in the agro-based industry.Key words: Distribution channel; Innovation; Effecti veness; Performance; SMEs; Indonesi

Dynamic pricing and inventory control with no backorders under uncertainty and competition

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Sloan School of Management, Operations Research Center, 2006.Includes bibliographical references (p. 271-284).Recently, revenue management has become popular in many industries such as the airline, the supply chain, and the transportation industry. Decision makers realize that even small improvements in their operations can have a significant impact on their profits. Nevertheless, determining pricing and inventory optimal policies in more realistic settings may not be a tractable task. Ignoring the potential inaccuracy of parameters may lead to a solution that actually performs poorly, or even that violates some constraints. Finally, competitors impact a supplier's best strategy by influencing her demand, revenues, and field of possible actions. Taking a game theoretic approach and determining the equilibrium of the system can help understand its state in the long run. This thesis presents a continuous time optimal control model for studying a dynamic pricing and inventory control problem in a make-to-stock manufacturing system. We consider a multi-product capacitated, dynamic setting. We introduce a demand-based model with convex costs. A key part of the model is that no backorders are allowed, as this introduces a constraint on the state variables. We first study the deterministic version of this problem.(cont.) We introduce and study a solution method that enables to compute the optimal solution on a finite time horizon in a monopoly setting. Our results illustrate the role of capacity and the effects of the dynamic nature of demand. We then introduce an additive model of demand uncertainty. We use a robust optimization approach to protect the solution against data uncertainty in a tractable manner, and without imposing stringent assumptions on available information. We show that the robust formulation is of the same order of complexity as the deterministic problem and demonstrate how to adapt solution method. Finally, we consider a duopoly setting and use a more general model of additive and multiplicative demand uncertainty. We formulate the robust problem as a coupled constraint differential game. Using a quasi-variational inequality reformulation, we prove the existence of Nash equilibria in continuous time and study issues of uniqueness. Finally, we introduce a relaxation-type algorithm and prove its convergence to a particular Nash equilibrium (normalized Nash equilibrium) in discrete time.by Elodie Adida.Ph.D