TY - JOUR
T1 - Pricing and sales-effort investment under bi-criteria in a supply chain of virtual products involving risk
AU - Chernonog, Tatyana
AU - Avinadav, Tal
AU - Ben-Zvi, Tal
N1 - Publisher Copyright:
© 2015 Elsevier B.V. and Association of European Operational Research Societies (EURO) with in the International Federation of Operational Research Societies (IFORS). All rights reserved.
PY - 2015/10/16
Y1 - 2015/10/16
N2 - This work develops a stochastic model of a two-echelon supply chain of virtual products in which the decision makers - a manufacturer and a retailer - may be risk-sensitive. Virtual products allow the retailer to avoid holding costs and ensure timely fulfillment of demand with no risk of shortage. We expand on the work of Chernonog and Avinadav (2014), who investigated the pricing of virtual products under uncertain and price-dependent demand, by including sales-effort as a decision variable that affects demand. Whereas in the previous work equilibrium was obtained exactly as in a deterministic case for any utility function, herein it is not. Consequently, we focus on the strategies of both the manufacturer and the retailer under different profit criteria, including the use of bi-criteria. By formulating the problem as a Stackelberg game, we show that the problem can be analytically solved by assuming certain common structures of the demand function and of the preferences of both the manufacturer and the retailer with regard to risk. We extend the solution to the case of imperfect information regarding the preferences and offer guidelines for the formation of efficient sets of decisions under bi-criteria. Finally, we provide numerical results.
AB - This work develops a stochastic model of a two-echelon supply chain of virtual products in which the decision makers - a manufacturer and a retailer - may be risk-sensitive. Virtual products allow the retailer to avoid holding costs and ensure timely fulfillment of demand with no risk of shortage. We expand on the work of Chernonog and Avinadav (2014), who investigated the pricing of virtual products under uncertain and price-dependent demand, by including sales-effort as a decision variable that affects demand. Whereas in the previous work equilibrium was obtained exactly as in a deterministic case for any utility function, herein it is not. Consequently, we focus on the strategies of both the manufacturer and the retailer under different profit criteria, including the use of bi-criteria. By formulating the problem as a Stackelberg game, we show that the problem can be analytically solved by assuming certain common structures of the demand function and of the preferences of both the manufacturer and the retailer with regard to risk. We extend the solution to the case of imperfect information regarding the preferences and offer guidelines for the formation of efficient sets of decisions under bi-criteria. Finally, we provide numerical results.
KW - Game theory
KW - Imperfect information
KW - Multiple criteria
KW - Risk
KW - Supply chain
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U2 - 10.1016/j.ejor.2015.05.024
DO - 10.1016/j.ejor.2015.05.024
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:84930872830
SN - 0377-2217
VL - 246
SP - 471
EP - 475
JO - European Journal of Operational Research
JF - European Journal of Operational Research
IS - 2
ER -