Supply Chain Coordination with a Risk-Averse Retailer and a Combined Buy-Back and Revenue Sharing Contract

Abstract

This paper investigates the ability of a combined buy-back (BB) and revenue sharing (RS) contract to improve the efficiency of a supply chain involving a risk-neutral supplier and a risk-averse retailer facing stochastic demand. We show that the combined contract can coordinate the supply chain under mild conditions. Further, the effects of risk aversion and contract parameters on the agents’ decision-making are analyzed when the retailer’s risk aversion is modeled by the conditional value-at-risk (CVaR) criterion. In contrast to individual BB and RS contracts, the combined contract is able to mitigate the effect of risk-aversion and allow the supplier to obtain higher expected profit. Moreover, situations exist where the combined contract can coordinate the supply chain when neither the BB nor the RS contract can coordinate it. Numerical experiments conducted further confirm the analytical results derived.