Supply chains today routinely use third parties for many strategic activities, such as manufacturing, R&D, or software development. These activities often include relationship-specific investment on the part of the vendor, while final outcomes can be uncertain. Therefore, writing complete...

This study investigates the strategic effect of return policies in a dual-channel supply chain, in which a manufacturer can sell products directly to end customers and indirectly via an independent retailer. The manufacturer decides whether to implement a return policy in either the direct or...

Channel sharing is an important marketing strategy for giant retailers who sell their own store brands and resell national brands for cooperative manufacturers simultaneously. To expand their market and increase profitability, national brand manufacturers may consider entering the online market...

A nearly explicit feedback Stackelberg-Nash equilibrium is obtained in a dynamic distribution channel consisting of a manufacturer and two competing asymmetric retailers engaged in promoting the manufacturer's product to be sold through the retailers. The manufacturer decides on its support for...

The extant supply chain management literature has not addressed the issue of coordination in supply chains involving risk-averse agents. We take up this issue and begin with defining a coordinating contract as one that results in a Pareto-optimal solution acceptable to each agent. Our definition...

Over the last two decades, differential game (DG) models have been used extensively to study such issues in dynamic environments as competitive advertising and pricing for new products in the marketing literature, capacity investments in the energy industry, government's subsidy policy in new...

We consider a supply chain in which a manufacturer sells an innovative durable product to an independent retailer over its life cycle. We assume that the product demand follows a Bass-type diffusion process, and it is determined by the market influences, retail price of the product, and shelf...

Cooperative (co-op) advertising is an important instrument for aligning manufacturer and retailer decisions in supply chains. In this, the manufacturer announces a co-op advertising policy, i.e., a participation rate that specifies the percentage of the retailer's advertising expenditure that it...

In this paper we characterize the feedback equilibrium of a general infinite-horizon Stackelberg-Nash differential game where the roles of the players are mixed. By mixed we mean that one player is a leader on some decisions and a follower on other decisions. We prove a verification theorem that...

We study a supply chain in which a consumer goods manufacturer sells its product through a retailer. The retailer undertakes promotional expenditures, uch as advertising, to increase sales and to compete against other retailer(s). The manufacturer supports the retailer’s promotional...