Production-and-order strategy with demand information updating and uncertain spot price

Abstract

We study production-and-order strategy in a two-echelon supply chain consisting of a single manufacturer and a single retailer in which both market demand and spot price are uncertain. The retailer updates early demand information through observing new market signal during long production season. The retailer may order product before the demand is updated by signing wholesale price contract (called a contract order), or order from the manufacturer in spot market after the demand is updated (called a spot order). In a retailer-led Stackelberg game, we construct a two-stage dynamic decision model to derive the optimal equilibrium solutions for the production and order quantity under both contract order strategy and spot order strategy. We characterize the conditions under which demand information updating benefits or hurts the members and a win-win is achieved. In sharp contrast to the existing findings in that the retailer always prefers to order late until demand information is updated, we discover that the retailer may prefers to order early when the spot price uncertainty is above a certain threshold. Then, we design a single-side payment contract to stimulate the manufacturer to choose order mode satisfying the retailer’s preference.