Is a 'free lunch' a good lunch? The performance of zero wholesale price-based supply-chain contracts
Journal
European Journal of Operational Research
Journal Volume
285
Journal Issue
1
Pages
237-246
Date Issued
2020
Author(s)
Guo S.
Abstract
In the real world, some manufacturers supply their products to retailers at a zero wholesale price (ZWP), and receive compensation by sharing the revenue or receiving some side payment from the retailers. In this paper, we analyse this kind of ZWP-based supply-chain contract. In the basic model, ordering is done either by the manufacturer or the retailer. For both of these cases, we explore ZWP-revenue-sharing (ZR) contracts, ZWP-side-payment (ZS) contracts, and ZWP-revenue-sharing-plus-side-payment (ZRS) contracts. We prove that, irrespective of the ordering scenario being retailer-led or manufacturer-led, only a ZRS contract can achieve win-win coordination. In the extended models, we first study the scenario with multiple products and discuss how a generalised ZRS contract can coordinate the supply chain efficiently. We then investigate greedy wholesale price (GWP)?ased contracts, in which the manufacturer charges the retailer a wholesale price equal to the retail price. We find that a GWP-based revenue-sharing-plus-side-payment (GRS) contract and a ZRS contract can both achieve win-win coordination. However, the ZRS contract mean-variance dominates the GRS contract in bringing a lower level of risk to both the retailer and manufacturer if the unit production cost is sufficiently small. We further discuss cases of differences in the perception of ZWP versus non-ZWP contracts. Important managerial insights are derived from the findings. ? 2020
Subjects
Coordination; Multiple products; Nash bargaining; Supply chain contracts; Supply chain management
Other Subjects
Sales; Supply chain management; Coordination; Extended model; Multiple products; Nash bargaining; Revenue-sharing; Supply chain contracts; Unit production cost; Whole sale prices; Manufacture
Publisher
Elsevier B.V.
Type
journal article