Optimal strategy for selling on group-buying website

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to help business marketers with offline channels to make decisions on whether to sell through Group-buying (GB) websites and how to set online price with the coordination of maximum deal size on GB websites. Design/methodology/approach: Considering the deal structure of GB websites especially for the service fee and minimum deal size limit required by GB websites, advertising effect of selling on GB websites, and interaction between online and offline markets, an analytical model is built to derive optimal online price and maximum deal size for sellers selling through GB website. This paper aims to answer four research questions: (1) How to make a decision on maximum deal size with coordination of the deal price? (2) Will selling on GB websites always be better than staying with offline channel only? (3) What kind of products is more appropriate to sell on GB website? (4)How could GB website operator induce sellers to offer deep discount in GB deals? Findings and Originality/value: This paper obtains optimal strategies for sellers selling on GB website and finds that: Even if a seller has sufficient capacity, he/she may still set a maximum deal size on the GB deal to take advantage of Advertisement with Limited Availability (ALA) effect; Selling through GB website may not bring a higher profit than selling only through offline channel when a GB site only has a small consumer base and/or if there is a big overlap between the online and offline markets; Low margin products are more suitable for being sold online with ALA strategies (LP-ALA or HP-ALA) than high margin ones; A GB site operator could set a small minimum deal size to induce deep discounts from the sellers selling through GB deals. Research limitations/implications: The present study assumed that the demand function is determinate and linear. It will be interesting to study how stochastic demand and a more general demand function affect the optimal strategies. Practical implications: This paper provides a very useful model framework and optimal strategies for sellers’ selling on GB website. It takes advantage of the analytical model to explain much typical practical phenomenon for E-commerce like free sale with limited availability and so forth. It also helps GB website operator to induce deep discount from sellers. Originality/value: This paper is a first attempt to examine the seller's GB sale decision problem regarding to price and bounds on deal sizes. It analyses how the minimum deal size set by the GB website affect the optimal decision of sellers’. Moreover, it also discusses the impact of the interactions between online and offline markets on sellers’ decisionPeer Reviewe

A Modeling Study on the Operational Stability of a Variable Speed Direct Expansion Air Conditioning System

The instability in a refrigeration system, conventionally known as hunting, is the phenomena of the oscillation of certain system operational parameters such as the degree of refrigerant superheat (DS), refrigerant mass flow rate and evaporating pressure. Hunting has been noticed in not only the refrigeration systems controlled by thermostatic expansion valves (TEVs), but also those controlled by electronic expansion valves (EEVs), and hence attracted a lot of research interest. However, no previous studies on the impacts of both the operational parameters of an EEV and the simultaneous variation of compressor and supply fan speed in a variable speed (VS) direct expansion (DX) air conditioning (A/C) system may be identified. Â This paper reports on a modeling study on the operational stability of a VS DX A/C system. An existing detailed, physical based dynamic model for a VS DX A/C system has been further developed by adding equations for both the temperature sensor in an EEV and the air side of the evaporator. Using this further developed model, a modeling study on the stability of a VS DX A/C system based on the classical minimal-stable-signal (MSS) theory has been carried out. The effects of the dynamics of the temperature sensor, Proportional-Integral (PI) control settings of the EEV and variable speed operation of both compressor and supply fan on the operational stability of the VS DX A/C system have been investigated. The modelling results demonstrated that increasing the time constant of the temperature sensor would help mitigating the system instability, and increasing the compressor speed or decreasing the supply fan speed would lead to the movement of a mixture-vapor transition point towards evaporator exit, leading to potential instability of the VS DX A/C system.

Impact of Back up Quantity Contract on Two-level Supply Chain: A Simulation Approach

In this new era of Supply chain coordination contracts are offered and accepted according to the varying need and specification of the industry and business in discussion. The contract variations arise according to the circumstances and adaptability by both manufacturer and retailer. An important challenge faced by the contracts being offered is the adaptability and robustness when demand observed is different from the forecast. Because of stochastic and uncertain demand, retailer faces lost sales and eventually loses revenue within the same horizon. This paper discusses a back up quantity contract for a single season in which retailer orders for one-shot inventory ordering. Manufacturer retains some part of the ordered inventory as backup and provides the units at first stage. If stock at retailer lags behind the demand, he gets the backup quantity otherwise he pays some agreed upon nominal price to manufacturer in case that inventory is not at all required. We assumed the case of single manufacturer and single retailer. If units are not required, the risk of holding inventory lies with manufacturer and salvaged at zero. The strategy is suitable for businesses having short seasonal products and high demand variability. We used Monte Carlo simulation for analyzing lost sales and supply chain profit scenario and used worst case distribution and normal distribution to validate the Pareto improving contractual relationship

Analyzing Inventory Turnover Performance in Different Retailing Mode of Operations

Inventory turnover differs across different retailers and operation modes employed by the retailers. Such a variation while undermining the usefulness of inventory turnover for performance analysis; requires particular attention. We perform an empirical analysis using sales data from a large retail firm for the year 2013-2016 for investigating the relationship of inventory turnover with mode of operations. The analysis reveals that the variation of inventory turnover among different mode of operations is much larger than variation of inventory turnover within each mode. So there is significant relationship between mode of operations and inventory turnover. This study inspects the influence of different channel structures on inventory turnover in a large supermarket, which has employed multiple modes of operations in different categories

A modeling study on alleviating uneven defrosting for a vertical three-circuit outdoor coil in an air source heat pump unit during reverse cycle defrosting

Reverse cycle defrosting is the most widely used standard defrosting method for air source heat pump (ASHP) units. It was suggested in previous experimental studies that downwards flowing of the melted frost over a vertical multi-circuit outdoor coil in an ASHP unit has negative effects on reverse cycle defrosting performance. To quantitatively study the negative effects, an experimental study and a modeling study on draining away locally the melted frost for an experimental ASHP unit with a three-circuit outdoor coil were carried out and separately reported. However, for exiting ASHP units, it is hardly possible to install water collecting trays between circuits. To alleviate uneven defrosting for a vertical multi-circuit outdoor coil in an existing ASHP unit, an effective alternative is to vary the heat supply to each refrigerant circuit by varying the opening values of modulating valves installed at an inlet pipe to each circuit. In this paper, a modeling study on varying heat (via refrigerant) supply to each refrigerant circuit in a three-circuit outdoor coil to alleviate uneven defrosting is reported. Finally, in the designed three study cases, defrosting energy use could be decreased to 94.6%, as well as a reduction of 7 s in defrosting duration by fully closing the modulating valve on the top circuit when its defrosting terminated

Financing Multiple Heterogeneous Suppliers in Assembly Systems: Buyer Finance vs. Finance

Buyer finance has been practiced by manufacturers/assemblers for years; however, few papers have investigated the efficacy of buyer finance in an assembly system with multiple suppliers. This paper fills the literature gap by comparing buyer finance with bank finance in a supply chain with one assembler and multiple heterogeneous capital-constrained component suppliers. We characterize the equilibrium solutions for different financing schemes (i.e., buyer finance, bank finance, and no finance). We show that in buyer finance the assembler should charge the suppliers the lowest possible interest rate, which may be even below its own unit capital opportunity cost, leading to interest losses in financing suppliers. However, the assembler can benefit more from enhanced inventory backup and lower component purchasing prices resulting from the low buyer-finance interest rate. We further compare the two financing schemes from the perspectives of the assembler, the borrowing and nonborrowing suppliers, and the whole supply chain. Our analysis reveals that the assembler may offer buyer finance even if its own unit capital opportunity cost is higher than the bank risk-free interest rate. We also demonstrate how the suppliers’ initial capitals, production costs, and their heterogeneities affect the assembler’s selection of the optimal financing scheme and identify the conditions under which buyer finance is better than bank finance for different parties in this assembly supply chain

A Numerical Study On The Indoor Thermal Environment Served By A Novel Air Source Heat Pump Powered Bed-Based Space Heating (ASHP-BBSH) System

A numerical study on the indoor thermal environment served a novel air source heat pump powered bed-based space radiation heating (ASHP-BBSH) system is reported in this paper. This novel system combines the merits from a Chinese Kang, or a heated bed, widely used in northern rural China and a standard ASHP system, which can provide localized space heating via both convection and radiation to maintain a comfortable indoor thermal environment, at reduced energy use. In this novel bed-based system, a bed is heated and thus used as a radiator for providing space heating at both daytime and nighttime. In this paper, firstly, a numerical model for a bedroom with a heated bed was firstly built and a manikin with simplified dimensions and physiological shape sitting on the heated bed has been added to the numerical model. Secondly, using the model, the relationships between indoor thermal environment and a number of influencing factors, including the bed surface temperature and heating area were numerically studied. Thirdly, a comparison between the novel system and a standard ASHP system was numerically conducted to demonstrate the advantages of the novel bed-based space heating system. The numerical results show that compared with a standard ASHP system, a better thermal comfort level and higher energy saving potential can be achieved by applying the ASHP-BBSH system. Necessary parameters for the system design and operation in the follow-up experimental work were provided