A Review of Stackelberg Game Theory Model on Trade Credit

Over the years, game theory has been used extensively to study interactions between the supplier and the retailer in business environment. Recently, a number of researchers have applied Stackelberg game theory on trade credit in centralized and decentralized channels. In this work, we reviewed the assumptions of the Stackelberg game theory model, its solution, its limitations and further extensions were also considered. Furthermore, how the Stackelberg game model applies to trade credit has been analyzed.&nbsp

Dynamic Explanations of Industry Structure and Performance

Industrial Organization,

Supply chain finance for ameliorating and deteriorating products: a systematic literature review

Ameliorating and deteriorating products, or, more generally, items that change value over time, present a high sensitiveness to the surrounding environment (e.g., temperature, humidity, and light intensity). For this reason, they should be properly stored along the supply chain to guarantee the desired quality to the consumers. Specifically, ameliorating items face an increase in value if there are stored for longer periods, which can lead to higher selling price. At the same time, the costumers’ demand is sensitive to the price (i.e., the higher the selling price the lower the final demand), sensitiveness that is related to the quality of the products (i.e., lower sensitiveness for high-quality products). On the contrary, deteriorating items lose quality and value over time which result in revenue losses due to lost sales or reduced selling price. Since these products need to be properly stored (i.e., usually in temperature- and humidity-controlled warehouses) the holding costs, which comprise also the energy costs, may be particularly relevant impacting on the economic, environmental, and social sustainability of the supply chain. Furthermore, due to the recent economic crisis, companies (especially, small and medium enterprises) face payment difficulties of customers and high volatility of resources prices. This increases the risk of insolvency and on the other hand the financing needs. In this context, supply chain finance emerged as a mean for efficiency by coordinating the financial flow and providing a set of financial schemes aiming at optimizing accounts payable and receivable along the supply chain. The aim of the present study is thus to investigate through a systematic literature review the two main themes presented (i.e., inventory management models for products that change value over time, and financial techniques and strategies to support companies in inventory management) to understand if any financial technique has been studied for supporting the management of this class of products and to verify the existing literature gap

Search, Obfuscation, and Price Elasticities on the Internet

We examine the competition between a group of Internet retailers that operate in an environment where a price search engine plays a dominant role. We show that for some products in this environment, the easy price search makes demand tremendously price-sensitive. Retailers, though, engage in obfuscation---practices that frustrate consumer search or make it less damaging to firms---resulting in much less price sensitivity on other products. We discuss several models of obfuscation and examine its effects on demand and markups empirically. Observed markups are adequate to allow efficient online retailers to survive.

Application of Optimization in Production, Logistics, Inventory, Supply Chain Management and Block Chain

The evolution of industrial development since the 18th century is now experiencing the fourth industrial revolution. The effect of the development has propagated into almost every sector of the industry. From inventory to the circular economy, the effectiveness of technology has been fruitful for industry. The recent trends in research, with new ideas and methodologies, are included in this book. Several new ideas and business strategies are developed in the area of the supply chain management, logistics, optimization, and forecasting for the improvement of the economy of the society and the environment. The proposed technologies and ideas are either novel or help modify several other new ideas. Different real life problems with different dimensions are discussed in the book so that readers may connect with the recent issues in society and industry. The collection of the articles provides a glimpse into the new research trends in technology, business, and the environment

Sustainable Inventory Management Model for High-Volume Material with Limited Storage Space under Stochastic Demand and Supply

Inventory management and control has become an important management function, which is vital in ensuring the efficiency and profitability of a company’s operations. Hence, several research studies attempted to develop models to be used to minimise the quantities of excess inventory, in order to reduce their associated costs without compromising both operational efficiency and customers’ needs. The Economic Order Quantity (EOQ) model is one of the most used of these models; however, this model has a number of limiting assumptions, which led to the development of a number of extensions for this model to increase its applicability to the modern-day business environment. Therefore, in this research study, a sustainable inventory management model is developed based on the EOQ concept to optimise the ordering and storage of large-volume inventory, which deteriorates over time, with limited storage space, such as steel, under stochastic demand, supply and backorders. Two control systems were developed and tested in this research study in order to select the most robust system: an open-loop system, based on direct control through which five different time series for each stochastic variable were generated, before an attempt to optimise the average profit was conducted; and a closed-loop system, which uses a neural network, depicting the different business and economic conditions associated with the steel manufacturing industry, to generate the optimal control parameters for each week across the entire planning horizon. A sensitivity analysis proved that the closed-loop neural network control system was more accurate in depicting real-life business conditions, and more robust in optimising the inventory management process for a large-volume, deteriorating item. Moreover, due to its advantages over other techniques, a meta-heuristic Particle Swarm Optimisation (PSO) algorithm was used to solve this model. This model is implemented throughout the research in the case of a steel manufacturing factory under different operational and extreme economic scenarios. As a result of the case study, the developed model proved its robustness and accuracy in managing the inventory of such a unique industry

Cost-sharing contract design in a low-carbon service supply chain

This paper investigates a service supply chain (SC) consisting of a service provider (SP) who is in charge of carbon emission reduction and service, and a service integrator (SI) who is responsible for low-carbon advertising, considering corporate social responsibility (CSR). Given that SP shares SI’s advertising cost, SI may have three types of cost sharing decisions, namely, not sharing any cost of SP (contract PA), sharing SP’s emission reduction cost (contract PAIE), or sharing SP’s service cost (contract PAIS). We establish three differential game models to explore the optimal decisions, and identify the conditions under which SP and SI would provide positive participation rates. Our findings demonstrate that consumers’ low-carbon preference, and chain members’ marginal profits and CSR behaviors significantly influence the optimal solutions. Furthermore, we indicate that two-way contracts (contracts PAIE and PAIS) could benefit the entire service SC and its members. Specifically, SI prefers contract PAIE when SP’s service cost efficiency is lower, whereas he would rather choose contract PAIS under a higher one. More importantly, contracts PAIS and PAIE would be the potential equilibrium contract when SI has a relatively high marginal profit. When it is sufficiently low, contracts PAIE and PA would be the possible equilibrium contract