Returns Policies and Retail Price Competition

We show that returns policies do increase manufacturer profitability by attenuating price competition between retailers. This effect holds only in the presence of end-user demand uncertainty. The conditions under which a returns policy raises the manufacturer's profit are weaker when retailing is a duopoly than when retailing is a monopoly. This suggests that returns policies serve both to dampen competition and resolve demand uncertainty.channels, competition, returns, pricing

Buyback and return policies for a book publishing firm = Egy könyvkiadó vállalat visszavásárlási stratégiája

A dolgozat célja egy vállalati gyakorlatból származó eset elemzése. Egy könyvkiadót tekintünk. A kiadó kapcsolatban van kis- és nagykereskedőkkel, valamint a fogyasztók egy csoportjával is vannak kapcsolatai. A könyvkiadók projekt rendszerben működnek. A kiadó azzal a problémával szembesül, hogy hogyan ossza el egy frissen kiadott és nyomtatott könyv példányszámait a kis- és nagykereskedők között, valamint mekkora példányszámot tároljon maga a fogyasztók közvetlen kielégítésére. A kiadóról feltételezzük, hogy visszavásárlási szerződése van a kereskedőkkel. A könyv iránti kereslet nem ismert, de becsülhető. A kis- és nagykereskedők maximalizálják a nyereségüket. = The aim of the paper is to analyze a practical real world problem. A publishing house is given. The publishing firm has contacts to a number of wholesaler / retailer enterprises and direct contact to customers to satisfy the market demand. The book publishers work in a project industry. The publisher faces with the problem how to allocate the stocks of a given, newly published book to the wholesaler and retailer, and to hold some copies to satisfy the customers direct from the publisher. The publisher has a buyback option. The distribution of the demand is unknown, but it can be estimated. The wholesaler / retailer maximize the profits. The problem can be modeled as a one-warehouse and N-retailer supply chain with not identical demand distribution. The model can be transformed in a game theory problem. It is assumed that the demand distribution follows a Poisson distribution

Supply Chain Coordination Model with Retailerfs Risk Attitudes

One of the major concerns in supply chain management is the coordination among various members of a supply chain comprising suppliers, manufacturers, distributors, wholesalers and retailers. We consider a newsvendor model in a two level supply chain with one supplier and one retailer. In this model, the retailer must order the item from the supplier prior to the selling season. Due to the short selling season and long replenishment lead time, the retailer is unable to reorder the item by using actual sales data generated from the early part of the season. The purpose of this paper is to discuss the eect of the attitudes toward risk of the members on the coordination in a supply chain. Using the risk averse utility functions, we show that, the risk averse retailer's optimal order quantity is less than or equal to that of a risk neutral one, when the goodwill penalty cost is ignored. We also explore the relationship between the retailer's order quantity and the risk aversion function in a special case.Supply chain management, Newsvendor model, Risk aversion.

Profits Optimization in the Supply Chain of Online Game Industry

Online game is a typical E-business indusry. Firstly, the problem is pointed out that the present researches on supply chain contracts designed for tangible traditional products have not considered the characteristic of intangible products such as online game industry. Secondly, the members and operation progress of the supply chain are explored in online game industry. Thirdly, a new supply chain contract model is provided for online game industry under the reference to the existed contracts models. At last, a mathematical example is provided, the profits for the whole supply chain and the profits for every member have been compared with between in the new contract model and in the old contract model, and the results shows the new contract model is better

Quantifying supply chain ineffectiveness under uncoordinated pricing decisions

Department of Logistics2007-2008 > Academic research: refereed > Publication in refereed journalAccepted ManuscriptPublishe

Supply chain optimization in a retail environment

Thesis (M.B.A.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Sloan School of Management; and, (S.M.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Civil and Environmental Engineering; in conjunction with the Leaders for Manufacturing Program at MIT, 2003.Includes bibliographical references (p. 53).by Stephanie K. Hsu.S.M.M.B.A

Study on Buyback Contract in Supply Chain With a Loss-Averse Supplier and Multiple Loss-Averse Retailers Under Stockout Loss Situation

According to the prospect theory and the loss-aversion function, this paper developers the buyback contract model in a two-stage supply chain with a loss-averse supplier and multiple loss-averse retailers. Under the stockout loss setting, we analyze the effect of the loss aversion on the behavior from the retailers and the supplier, and then the buyback contract has been shown to be able to coordinate the supply chain. Furthermore, the number of retailers and loss aversion coefficient meet a certain range, there will be a unique optimal buyback price to achieve supply chain coordination

Do Retail Brands Bias Consumer Decision Making? -an Fmri-Study on Retail Brand Frames and the Evaluation of Product Packaging

In economic and psychological theory there is evidence that the manner ("framing") in which a choice-problem is presented, can affect people's preferences. To add a new theoretical perspective to this research stream, we investigated the neural correlates of retail-brand-frames and analysed how participants' product evaluation is biased by the framing-information