Channel structures of transnational supply chains

Abstract

<p style='text-indent:20px;'>There are two fundamental and important problems for enterprises with an existing domestic supply chain: whether to build a new transnational supply chain and which channel should be chosen to build the new transnational supply chain. In this paper, we assume that the enterprise's existing domestic supply chain structure and the transnational supply chain structure to be considered are likely to be distributor channels and direct sales channels. By considering different channel scenarios at home and abroad, we establish a robust newsvendor model with profit maximization motivation to study the above-mentioned problems. We find that exchange rate risk and foreign price are key factors that determine whether an enterprise chooses to build a new transnational supply chain. However, the channel preference of enterprises when constructing transnational supply chains depends not only on exchange rate risk and foreign price, but also on the drive of foreign demand attributes (demand scale and demand uncertainty). We also find that enterprises have a humanitarian "principle of equality" when considering the construction of transnational supply chains <inline-formula><tex-math id="M1">\begin{document}$ - $\end{document}</tex-math></inline-formula> the operational characteristics and channel structure of domestic supply chains will not affect whether and how enterprises build a new transnational supply chain.</p>