How Does Risk Hedging Impact Operations? Insights from a Price-Setting Newsvendor Model

Abstract

Financial asset price movement impacts product demand and thus influences operational decisions of a firm. We develop and solve a general model that integrates financial risk hedging into a price-setting newsvendor. The optimal hedging strategy is found analytically, which leads to an explicit objective function for optimization of pricing and service levels. We find that, in general, the presence of hedging reduces the optimal price. It also reduces the optimal service level when the asset price trend positively impacts product demand ("asset price benefits demand"), while it may increase the optimal service level by a small margin when the impact is negative ("asset price hurts demand"). We construct the mean-variance efficient frontier that characterizes the risk-return trade-off, and we quantify the risk reduction achieved by the hedging strategy. Our numerical case study using real data of Ford Motor Company shows that the markdown in price and decrease in service level are small under our model, and the hedging strategy substantially reduces risk without materially reducing operational profit.