We present a formal model of haggling between a name-your-own-price retailer and a set of individual buyers. Rather than posting a price, the retailer waits for potential buyers to submit offers for a given product and then chooses to either accept or reject them. Consumers whose offers have been rejected can invest in additional haggling effort and increment their offers. The main advantage of...

In the traditional retail industry, some supermarket chains and department stores have been maintaining strong positions as the market comes to maturity. They can make use of the strong positions to squeeze their suppliers and obtain extra earnings. This situation may be challenged by the rapid development of e-commerce. Consumers’ purchase habits have been changing and many manufacturers are s...

This paper considers a mechanism design problem in which a retailer motivates a manufacturer to gather information concerning the demand for its new product. The information will be of value to the retailer, in deciding whether to allocate limited shelf space for the new product. The model reveals that if the retailer cannot observe whether the manufacturer has gathered information, then to mot...

This paper analyses the impact of retailer overconfidence psychology on incentive contract for a manufacturer-retailer supply chain, where product quality is affected by the manufacturer and the retailer’s behaviors. There exists double-sided moral hazard in the supply chain. Using principal-agent model, this paper builds incentive contracts under symmetric and asymmetric information situations...

In this research, we consider a retailer selling products from two different generations, both with limited inventory over a predetermined selling horizon. Due to the spatial constraints or the popularity of a given product, the retailer may only display goods from one specific generation. If the transaction of the displayed item cannot be completed, the retailer may provide an alternative from...

This paper considers vertical restraints in the context of an intrabrand competition model in which a single manufacturer deals with two vertically differentiated retailers. We establish two main results. First, if the market cannot be vertically segmented, the manufacturer will foreclose the low quality retailer either directly by dealing exclusively with the high quality retailer, or indirect...

Coordinating supply chains has been a major issue in supply chain management research. This paper focuses on the coordination of supply chains with downside-risk-averse agents. Motivating by the revenue sharing contract, we developed the sufficient conditions for the coordination of the supply chain with one downside-risk-averse agent. Following the sufficient conditions, the downside protectio...

We consider a newsvendor problem in a supply chain that consists of a manufacturer and a retailer. The manufacturer is the Stackelberg leader and the retailer is the follower.We examine how themanufacturer can contract awholesale-price-only agreementwith its retailer thatmaximizes its profit.We also propose a returns policy with a wholesale-price-discount scheme (returns-discount contract) that...

This paper considered a single-item, three-echelon (supplier, retailer, and customer) inventory problem. At random times, the supplier offers the retailer a discount. The inter-arrival times of discounts are exponentially distributed. For the retailer, whether or not to take a discount offer depends on its inventory level. If inventory is below threshold level S, the retailer will order to repl...

This paper characterizes the class of Pareto optimal returns policies between a manufacturer and a retailer who receives consumer returns. The manufacturer may take a costly hidden action that reduces the expected number of products returned by consumers, which when realized is hidden information known only to the retailer. When faced with consumer returns, the retailer must decide whether to s...