A Model for Cooperative Advertising and Pricing Decisions in Manufacturer-Retailer Supply Chain with Discount: A Game Theory Approach

Coordinating the supply chain is among the most important subjects that is extensively addressed in the related literature. If a supply chain is to be coordinated, it is equivalent to say that we must solve a problem related to competition and cooperation. The game theory is obviously one of the most effective methods to solve such problems, in which the players of the supply chain are assumed to engage in cooperative and non-cooperative games. The current study aims to coordinate a two-level supply chain consisting of a manufacturer and a retailer. This will be achieved using cooperative advertisement along with pricing decisions such that the manufacturer offers a price discount to the retailer and the demand is affected by pricing and advertisement. Cooperative advertisement is a coordinated effort made by all the members of the supply chain to increase the customer demand, in which the retailer does the local advertisement and the manufacturer pays for a portion or all the costs of the retailer advertisement. We consider two models for manufacturer-retailer relation using the game theory: the manufacturer-Stackelberg and the retailer-Stackelberg games with asymmetric power distribution.