INTRODUCTION The popularity of electronic cigarettes (e-cigarettes) has spurred the growth of vape shops, but little is known about the retailers who may play an important role in the introduction and dissemination of vape products. In this paper we examine how retailers profile their customers and their perceptions of vaping, and the services their shops provide. METHODS Semi-structured inte...

This paper investigates the effects of information sharing and early order commitment on the performance of four inventory policies used by retailers in a supply chain of one capacitated supplier and four retailers. Model parameters and operating conditions are emulated from a local business supplying a standard product to its retailers. Through computer simulation and subsequent analyses, we f...

OBJECTIVES Many of the approximately 8000 New Zealand retailers selling tobacco are small stores that tobacco companies have represented as victims of policy measures designed to reduce smoking. Despite this depiction, many retailers experience considerable ambivalence in selling tobacco, a product they know harms their customers. We explored how retailers perceived the proposed introduction of...

H should the excess profit because of inventory pooling be shared amongst firms at different levels along the supply chain? Suppose each of several retailers observes local demand for a common item and places an order at the supplier, which is immediately filled if the supplier has the item in stock. The supplier can fill retailer orders either from their reserved inventories or from a shareabl...

Clusters of business locations, which considerably impact daily activities, have been prominent phenomena. Yet the question of how and why firms cluster in certain areas has not been sufficiently studied. This paper investigates the emergence of clusters of business locations on a supply chain network comprised of suppliers, retailers, and, consumers. Krugman (1996) argued that urban concentrat...

Cooperative advertising is a key incentive offered by a manufacturer to influence retailers’ promotional decisions. We study cooperative advertising in a dynamic retail duopoly where a manufacturer sells his product through two competing retailers. We model the problem as a Stackelberg differential game in which the manufacturer announces his shares of advertising costs of the two retailers or ...

Consider a supplier selling to multiple retailers. Demand varies across periods, but the supplier’s capacity and wholesale price are fixed. If demand is high, the retailers’ needs exceed capacity, and the supplier must implement an allocation mechanism to dole out production. We examine how the choice of mechanism impacts retailer actions and supply chain performance. In particular, we analyze ...

this study aims to minimize the total cost of a four-echelon supply chain including suppliers, an assembler, distributers, and retailers. the total cost consists of purchasing raw materials from the suppliers by the assembler, assembling the final product, materials transportation from the suppliers to the assembler, product transportation from the assembler to the distributors, product transpo...

This paper develops a single wholesaler and multi retailers mixture inventory distribution model for a single item involving controllable lead-time with backorder and lost sales. The retailers purchase their items from the wholesaler in lots at some intervals throughout the year to meet the customers’ demand. Not to loose the demands, the retailers offer a price discount to the customers on the...