Mingming Leng

Game theoretic applications in supply chain management : a review

Abstract Recent emphasis on competition and cooperation in supply chains has resulted in the resurgence of game theory as a relevant tool for analyzing such interactions in a supply chain. This paper presents a review of more than 130 papers concerned with game theoretical applications in supply chain management (SCM). We first give a brief summary of the basic solution concepts in non-cooperative and cooperative games such as Nash and Stackelberg equilibria, Nash arbitration scheme and cooperation with sidepayments. the core, the Shapley value and nucleolus. Our review of supply chain-related game theoretical applications is presented in five areas: (i) Inventory games with fixed unit purchase cost, (ii) Inventory games with quantity discounts, (iii) Production and pricing competition, (iv) Games with other attributes, (v) Games with joint decisions on inventory, production/pricing and other attributes. The paper concludes with a summary of our review, suggestions for potential applications of game theory in SCM and an alternative classification of all reviewed papers.

Demand Functions in Decision Modeling: A Comprehensive Survey and Research Directions

A variety of mathematical forms have been developed to characterize demand functions which depend on a firms operational and marketing activities. Such demand functions are being increasingly used by researchers in economics and different functional areas of business. We provide a comprehensive survey of commonly used demand models which depend on (i) price, (ii) rebate, (iii) lead time, (iv) space, (v) quality, and (vi) advertising. Our survey includes single firm–demand models in each category, as well as game theoretic multifirm models involving strategic interaction among the firms. We observe that certain types of functional forms, such as linear, power/iso-elastic, multinomial logit, and multiplicative competitive interaction, have been widely used to construct various demand models in all six categories, but that a large majority of publications deal with categories (i) and (v) of demand models. For each of the six categories, we survey relevant functional forms in the representative papers, and discuss the main properties, the advantages, the disadvantages, and comment on possible future research directions. We also present discussions of the applications of these analytical demand models in empirical studies. The article ends with a summary of our major findings.

Analysis of the Single-Period Problem under Carbon Emissions Policies

We investigate the classical single-period (newsvendor) problem under carbon emissions policies including the mandatory carbon emissions capacity, the carbon emissions tax, and the cap-and-trade system. Specifically, under each policy, we find a firm’s optimal production quantity and corresponding expected profit, and draw analytic managerial insights. We show that, in order to reduce carbon emissions by a certain percentage, the tax rate imposed on the high-margin firm should be less than that on the low-margin firm for the high-profit perishable products, whereas the high-margin firm should absorb a high tax than the low-margin firm for the low-profit products. Under the cap-and-trade policy, the emissions capacity should be set to a level such that the marginal profit of the firm is less than the carbon credit purchasing price. We also derive the specific (closed-form) conditions under which, as a result of implementing the cap-and-trade policy, the firm’s expected profit is increased and carbon emissions are reduced.

Recent developments in dynamic advertising research

A variety of continuous-time differential functions have been developed to investigate dynamic advertising problems in business and economics fields. Since major dynamic models appearing before 1995 have been reviewed by a few survey papers, we provide a comprehensive review of the dynamic advertising models published after 1995, which are classified into six categories: (i) Nerlove–Arrow model and its extensions, (ii) Vidale–Wolfe model and its extensions, (iii) Lanchester model and its extensions, (iv) the diffusion models, (v) dynamic advertising-competition models with other attributes, and (vi) empirical studies for dynamic advertising problems. For each category, we first briefly summarize major relevant before-1995 models, and then discuss major after-1995 models in details. We find that the dynamic models reviewed in this paper have been extensively used to analyze various advertising problems in the monopoly, duopoly, oligopoly, and supply chain systems. Our review reveals that the diffusion models have not been used to analyze advertising problems in supply chain operations, which may be a research direction in the future. Moreover, we learn from our review that very few publications regarding dynamic advertising problems have considered the supply chain competition. We also find that very few researchers have used the diffusion model to investigate the dynamic advertising problems with product quality as a decision variable; and, the pricing decision has not been incorporated into any extant Lanchester model. The paper ends with a summary of our review and suggestions on possible research directions in the future.

Allocation of Cost Savings in a Three-Level Supply Chain with Demand Information Sharing: A Cooperative-Game Approach

We analyze the problem of allocating cost savings from sharing demand information in a three-level supply chain with a manufacturer, a distributor, and a retailer. To find a unique allocation scheme, we use concepts from cooperative game theory. First, we analytically compute the expected cost incurred by the manufacturer and then use simulation to obtain expected costs for the distributor and the retailer. We construct a three-person cooperative game in characteristic-function form and derive necessary conditions for the stability of each of five possible coalitions. To divide the cost savings between two members, or among three supply chain members, we use various allocation schemes. We present numerical analyses to investigate the impacts of the demand autocorrelation coefficient, ρ, and the unit holding and shortage costs on the allocation scheme.

Game-theoretic analyses of decentralized assembly supply chains: Non-cooperative equilibria vs. coordination with cost-sharing contracts

This paper considers a multiple-supplier, single manufacturer assembly supply chain where the suppliers produce components of a short life-cycle product which is assembled by the manufacturer. In this single-period problem the suppliers determine their production quantities and the manufacturer chooses the retail price. We assume that the manufacturer faces a random price-dependent demand in either additive or multiplicative form. For each case, we analyze both simultaneous-move and leader-follower games to respectively determine the Nash and Stackelberg equilibria, and find the globally-optimal solution that maximizes the system-wide expected profit. Then, we introduce appropriate buy-back and lost-sales cost-sharing contracts to coordinate this assembly supply chain, so that when all the suppliers and the manufacturer adopt their equilibrium solutions, the system-wide expected profit is maximized.

Demand Functions in Decision Modeling: A Comprehensive Survey and Research DirectionslSUPg†l/SUPg

A variety of mathematical forms have been developed to characterize demand functions which depend on a firms operational and marketing activities. Such demand functions are being increasingly used by researchers in economics and different functional areas of business. We provide a comprehensive survey of commonly used demand models which depend on (i) price, (ii) rebate, (iii) lead time, (iv) space, (v) quality, and (vi) advertising. Our survey includes single firm–demand models in each category, as well as game theoretic multifirm models involving strategic interaction among the firms. We observe that certain types of functional forms, such as linear, power/iso-elastic, multinomial logit, and multiplicative competitive interaction, have been widely used to construct various demand models in all six categories, but that a large majority of publications deal with categories (i) and (v) of demand models. For each of the six categories, we survey relevant functional forms in the representative papers, and discuss the main properties, the advantages, the disadvantages, and comment on possible future research directions. We also present discussions of the applications of these analytical demand models in empirical studies. The article ends with a summary of our major findings.

Side-payment contracts in two-person nonzero-sum supply chain games: Review, discussion and applications

This paper investigates supply chain coordination with side-payment contracts. We first summarize specific side-payment contracts and present our review on the literature that developed general side-payment schemes to coordinate supply chains. Following our review, we discuss two criteria that a proper side-payment contract must satisfy, and accordingly introduce a decision-dependent transfer payment function and a constant transfer term. We present the condition that the transfer function must satisfy, and use Nash arbitration scheme and Shapley value to compute the constant transfer term and derive its closed-form solution. Next, we provide a five-step procedure for the development of side-payment contract, and apply it to four supply chain games: Cournot and Bertrand games, a two-retailer supply chain game with substitutable products and a one-supplier, one-retailer supply chain. More specifically, for the Cournot game, we construct a linear transfer function and a constant side-payment to coordinate two producers. For the Bertrand game, we build a nonlinear transfer function which is equivalent to a revenue-sharing contract, and show that the constant term is zero and two firms in the game equally share the system-wide profit. For a supply chain with substitutable products, we present a side-payment contract to coordinate two retailers. For a two-echelon supply chain, we develop a proper side-payment scheme that can coordinate the supply chain and also help reduce the impact of forward buying on supply chain performance.

Online retailers’ promotional pricing, free-shipping threshold, and inventory decisions: A simulation-based analysis

We consider a two-stage decision problem, in which an online retailer first makes optimal decisions on his profit margin and free-shipping threshold, and then determines his inventory level. We start by developing the retailer’s expected profit function. Then, we use publicly-available statistics to find the best-fitting distribution for consumers’ purchase amounts and the best-fitting function for conversion rate (i.e., probability that an arriving visitor places an online order with the retailer). We show that: (i) a reduction of the profit margin does not significantly affect the standard deviation of consumers’ order sizes (purchase amounts) but increases the average order size; whereas, (ii) variations in a positive finite free-shipping threshold affect both the average value and the standard deviation of the order sizes. We then use Arena to simulate the online retailing system and OptQuest to find the retailer’s optimal decisions and maximum profit. Next, we perform a sensitivity analysis to examine the impact of the ratio of the unit holding and salvage cost to the unit shipping cost on the retailer’s optimal decisions. We also draw some important managerial insights.

Supply chain analysis under a price-discount incentive scheme for electric vehicles

We investigate an automobile supply chain where a manufacturer and a retailer serve heterogeneous consumers with electric vehicles (EVs) under a government’s price-discount incentive scheme that involves a price discount rate and a subsidy ceiling. We show that the subsidy ceiling is more effective in influencing the optimal wholesale pricing decision of the manufacturer with a higher unit production cost. However, the discount rate is more effective for the manufacturer with a lower unit production cost. Moreover, the expected sales are increasing in the discount rate but may be decreasing in the subsidy ceiling. Analytic results indicate that an effective incentive scheme should include both a discount rate and a subsidy ceiling. We also derive the necessary condition for the most effective discount rate and subsidy ceiling that maximize the expected sales of EVs, and obtain a unique discount rate and subsidy ceiling that most effectively improve the manufacturer’s incentive for EV production.