Managing supplier financial distress with advance payment discount and purchase order financing

Abstract

We examine a capital-constrained supply chain in which a small- and medium-sized enterprise (SME) supplier sells to an established retailer via a wholesale price contract. To mitigate the supplier's financial distress, the retailer chooses between two pre-shipment finance instruments: advance payment discount (APD) and buyer-backed purchase order financing (BPOF). When either APD or BPOF can be chosen, the retailer prefers APD to BPOF if her internal asset level is above a certain threshold. When both APD and BPOF are adopted, the retailer prefers APD and does not initiate BPOF unless the marginal cost of financial distress dominates the benefit of unit discount. We show that the financing equilibrium region of APD increases not only with the retailer's internal capital level, but also with demand variability. The interval and magnitude of the competition penalty incentivizes collaboration between supply chain partners.