This paper studies a single-vendor–multi-retailer supply chain and considers the case where the vendor merges with one of its retailers. After the merger, the vendor supplies products to the market both through a direct (integrated) sales channel and through the remaining retailers. Different...

This paper studies a two-stage supply chain where returnable transport items (RTIs) are used to ship finished products from the supplier to the buyer. Empty RTIs are collected at the buyer and returned to the supplier. The return time of RTIs is considered to be stochastic in this paper, and...