Profit Of Retailer Research Articles

Payment Delay in Supply Chain Management: A Systematic Literature Review

There is a general agreement in the literature that the payment delay (PD) is one of the strongest reasons for business failures nowadays. This paper studies PD in supply chain management (SCM) literature by providing a systematic literature review (SLR) of exclusively high ranked journals in the field of operation management. The authors identified five major issues in supply PD, namely inventory, cash flow, financial decision, supply chain (SC) coordination, and demand. They also discerned a growing trend in the literature related to analytical studies, which limits the generalisation of the findings, mostly due to the various assumptions used in the modelling process. The majority of these papers focused on the retail field because of its coordinated structure. This paper suggests that PD, as a coordination tool, can improve both the supplier's and retailer's profit. The paper concludes by suggesting a conceptual framework that summarises how PD influences the issues addressed above. The authors pinpoint potential future areas such as simulation under dynamic scenarios, including multi-echelon partners in order to better gauge the impact of PD on SC performance.

Government Subsidy Policies and Corporate Social Responsibility

With the rapid development of economy, the issue of CSR (corporate social responsibility) has become the focus, and the great importance is attached to the establishment of a socially responsible supply chain. How could the government design subsidy policies so as to raise CSR in a supply chain? To this end, three decision models consisting of the government, a manufacturer and a retailer are established respectively under different subsidy policies. We explore the impacts of the government subsidy on the members' profits, the CSR effort level, and social welfare. The results show that when the government only subsidizes the manufacturer (the retailer), retailer's (manufacturer's) profit increases in the manufacturer's (retailer's) CSR effort. However, when the government subsidizes the manufacturer and the retailer simultaneously, only the retailer's profit increases in the manufacturer's CSR effort. No matter which subsidy policy is adopted, continually increasing subsidies cannot promote the sustainable development of the supply chain but will harm social welfare. Besides, the equilibrium subsidy rate is positively related to the external effect coefficient. By the comparison of three subsidy policies, subsidizing both of the manufacturer and the retailer is the best one for the supply chain and the social welfare, followed by subsidizing the retailer only and subsidizing the manufacturer only, respectively.

Financing Strategy of Low-Carbon Supply Chain with Capital Constraint under Cap-and-Trade Regulation

Cap-and-trade regulation provides incentives for manufacturers to reduce carbon emissions, but manufacturers’ insufficient capital can disrupt the implementation of low-carbon emission reduction technologies. To alleviate capital constraints, manufacturers can adopt external financing for low-carbon emission reduction investments. This paper studies the independent financing and financing cooperation behavior in a supply chain in which the manufacturer and retailer first implement low-carbon emission reduction technologies and then organize production and sales in accordance with wholesale price contracts. Through comparing the optimal profits and low-carbon emission reduction levels under the independent financing and financing cooperation mode, we come to the following conclusions: (1) Although financing interest increases the cost of the supply chain, manufacturers prefer to invest in reducing carbon emissions rather than buying carbon quotas. (2) When financing independently, a decentralized decision-making mode (MD) is the best choice for manufacturers. (3) In cooperative financing, when the supply chain adopts a decentralized decision-making mode (SD) in which the retailer determines the financing cost-sharing ratio according to their optimal profit, the profits of the supply chain and its members are significantly improved. (4) When manufacturers and retailers adopt a centralized decision-making model (SC) in cooperative financing, they jointly determine the financing cost-sharing ratio and the level of low-carbon emission reduction. If the financing cost-sharing ratio meets a certain threshold range, the profits of manufacturers and retailers achieve Pareto improvement, indicating that this cooperative financing model is effective.

Integration of Operational and Marketing Tools With Time Delays: Is Cooperation Possible?

We confine our interest to a supply chain consisting of a manufacturer offering the quality improving effort and a retailer performing the promotional activity. The quality effort positively contributes to brand goodwill while the promotion negatively affects brand goodwill. However, the influences of both strategies, positive or negative, on brand goodwill are not instantaneous but delayed. Hence, to explore the impact of time delay and figure out the feasibility of a cooperative program in this situation, we formulate a differential game model with dual time delays. By deriving and comparing the equilibrium strategies, profits under non-cooperative, two-subsidy and centralized patterns, we find that the cooperative program is implementable if the marginal profit of manufacturer and retailer satisfy particular relationships and can achieve Pareto-improving for both parties but cannot fully coordinate the supply chain. Consequently, revenue sharing and two-subsidy policy are introduced to coordinate the decentralized supply chain.

A Review on Returnless Refunds in E-Commerce Retailing: Sales through Leniency

Though the skyrocketing rate of product returns hurts profitability of retailers, those in e-commerce must continue to offer returns to remain competitive. Through the analysis of previous studies, we assert the positive effects of lenient return policies on a retailer’s ability to gain and retain customers. This effect is explained by the relationship between return leniency, customer satisfaction and loyalty, and purchase intentions. Further, we investigate the individual product and customer factors that affect sales performance in relation to product returns. Building upon these premises, we offer that returnless refunds induce the desired customer response and suggest a layout for future studies.

Analysis of the Impact of Demand Volatility and Return Policies on a Price-setting Newsvendor

This paper studies a newsvendor problem in which the retailer can set both the selling price and the quantity ordered. The demand is stochastic and price-dependent and the retailer has the possibility to sell his unsold units at the end of the sales season. We present an analytical model of the retailer optimization process and show the conditions that the retailer can find optimal quantity and price simultaneously, then we use numerical methods to reveal the properties of retailer’s behavior. The existing results of price-setting newsvendor do not include buyback and our work brings a new condition on the lost sales rate elasticity for the computation of an optimal solution. Our results show that return policies can improve the profit of retailer and that this effect increases with the volatility of the demand. This observation reveals a crucial point for the supplier to design their contract according to demand uncertainty, allowing them to influence the retailer’s decision on price and order quantity by offering buy-back for unsold products.

Data-driven decision-making strategies for electricity retailers: Deep reinforcement learning approach

With the continuous development of the electricity market, the electricity retailers, as the intermediaries between producers and consumers, have emerged in some of the liberalized electricity markets. Meanwhile, the electricity retailer faces many increasingly significant challenges from the complexities and uncertainties in both the supply and consumption sides. This paper applies a data-driven decision-making strategy via Advantage Actor-Critic (A2C) and Deep Q-Learning (DQN) for the electricity retailers. The retailers' profits and consumers' costs are both taken into account. This study verifies that the applied data-driven methods can handle the decision-making problem as well as promote the profitability of retailers in the electricity market. Furthermore, A2C is more appropriate than DQN in our simulation. The effectiveness of the applied datadriven methods is validated by using real-world data.

Don’t Bite the Hand That Feeds You: Food Pantries and Food Retailer Profitability

Don’t Bite the Hand That Feeds You: Food Pantries and Food Retailer Profitability

Modified EOQ Model for Refrigerated Display’s Shelf-Space Allocation Problem

This study modifies the economic order quantity (EOQ) model for the problem of allocating refrigerated rack space in retail. The purpose of this study is to obtain the amount of space allocation for each product that can maximize retail profits. In the modified EOQ model, there are three components of storage costs, specifically storage costs, energy costs and quality costs. Energy costs and quality costs are adjusted to the ratio of cooled performance (i.e. Coefficient of Performance) and quality deterioration rate, respectively. This study adapts Water’s algorithm for EOQ orders with constraints on storage space in determining the amount of space allocation for each product. The Water’s algorithm uses an Additional Cost approach that is inherent in each unit of space used. The results show the cooling temperature is an important parameter in determining energy costs and quality costs. Through numerical examples, it is determined the right storage temperature and space allocation which gives maximum profit.

Retailing Performance Evaluation Scale for Indian Brick-and-Mortar Lifestyle Retailers (LSRS-b)

A majority of brick-and-mortar lifestyle retailers in India have adapted firm-level and output-driven measures to evaluate their overall retailing performance in addition to not apportioning the central office expenses incurred merely to run stores on to store’s profit and loss account. This output-driven approach is distracting them from focusing on input variables and efficiency that is inevitably imperative if sustainable retail profit and returns on investment are expected. In this exhaustive empirical study, we have studied a few select organized brick-and-mortar lifestyle retailers to identify 64 variables that directly or indirectly determine the returns on investment of a lifestyle retailer, of which we have chosen 16 input-driven variables to design the LSRS-b instrument in addition to ensuring integration of variables that have a significantly positive association and determination with consumer repeat visit rate, sales personnel consumer orientation, cash flow efficiency, revenue generation, profitability, returns on investment, and consumer-level performance evaluation. Based on 24 months of data evaluated, we have found that these 16 input-driven variables have a significant determination of about 86.90 percent concerning the final output i.e., returns on investment (ROI) which is a strong indicator of the reliability of LSRS-b instrument in evaluating the overall retailing performance of organized brick-and-mortar lifestyle retailers in India.

Evaluation of buyer‘s loyalty process in retail companies in Latvia under the conditions of globalization

Retail sector has always played an important role in the Latvian economy. The success of a profitable retail business depends on meeting the needs of buyers and, in the long run, building relationships with the buyer. Process of attracting new buyers always involves spending more money, time and energy. In order for a company to retain existing buyers, it is necessary to develop a set of marketing activities that promote and ensure customer loyalty. The globalization of the market is also having a greater impact on retail companies, which makes them to look for solutions for competitiveness and development. In order to identify factors for competitiveness, the authors of the study have set out to investigate the customer loyalty-formation activities in Latvian retail companies. To reach a goal the authors of the paper will study theoretical basis of loyalty formation employing the monographic or descriptive method, the next step will be analysis of the retail development tendencies in Latvia and loyalty-creation activity level of the Latvian retail companies. This study will give retailers an understanding of the importance of loyalty and the need to build it for the competitiveness of retail businesses. The authors have summarized these theoretical aspects and have defined a common approach to loyalty building and provisions for it. After completing the research, the authors conclude that by understanding the essence and formation of loyalty, the company can manage this process and maybe loyalty can be one of the tools for ensuring competitiveness.

ANALISIS KEUNTUNGAN PEDAGANG DAGING BABI BERDASARKAN PREFERENSI KONSUMEN DI PASAR TRADISIONAL KOTA MANADO

PROFIT ANALYSIS OF PORK RETAILERS BASED ON CONSUMER PREFERENCES IN TRADITIONAL MARKETS IN MANADO CITY.This study aims to analyze the level of profit and its ability to generate profit (profitability) by the pork retailers on traditional markets in Manado City. This research was conducted using a survey method, where the sampling method was purposive sampling toward 31 samples of pork seller. To meet the goal of this studi, revenue cost ratio and profit margin analysis was implied. Based on the results of the study it was found that the average overall cost of the business of retailers of pork components per week was IDR.22,558,822. with a total total cost of IDR. 699,323,491. The amount of carcass and non carcass sales of pigs based on consumer preferences averaged 398 Kg/week or 70.40 percent, while non carcasses sold an average of 168 Kg/week or 29.60 percent. The amount of sales based on consumer preferences in traditional markets in the city of Manado was IDR.848,890,000 per week with an average of IDR.27,383,548.39/week per retailer. The amount of profit according to the number of sales based on consumer preferences both carcass and non carcass of pig per week in the traditional market of Manado City was IDR.848,890,000 per week or an average of IDR.27,383,548.39 per week for each retailer. The amount of gross profit of pork retailers in the traditional market of Manado City was IDR.149,566,509 per week or an average of IDR.4,824,726 per week, while Gross Profit Margin was an ability to obtain profits based on the number of sales, which was 18%, which means average the average sales of both carcasses and non carcasses of pork according to consumer preferences provide gross profit of 18 percent per week.

Employing revenue sharing strategies when confronted with uncertain and promotion-sensitive demand

Revenue sharing (RS) refers to the distribution of income among stakeholders (e.g., manufacturers and retailers) in a business-to-business environment. This method is a widely employed marketing strategy in the video rental, telecoms, computer, sports, and music industries, among others. Promotional activities are also a popular method of stimulating sales. This study considers a decentralized supply chain, in which a manufacturer sells products to a retailer under conditions of uncertain and promotion-sensitive demand, using either a manufacturer or retailer promotion. The study aims to determine how RS affects the decision making and profits of both manufacturers and retailers. It seeks to uncover whether RS benefits channel members in the cases of manufacturer and retailer promotions. The results show that when the manufacturer promotes products to end customers, RS is an effective incentive for increasing the profits of manufacturers and retailers. However, retailers may be unwilling to share revenue when they undertake their own promotional activities based on different demand function settings. The findings add novel insights to the literature of management, which can be used by business decision makers.

Inroad into omni-channel retailing: Physical showroom deployment of an online retailer

The advent of mobile E-commerce and omni-channel consumers has powered the pure-play online retailer's expansion towards omni-channel operations. In conjunction with the online selling channel, our research explores the retailer's deployment of physical showrooms which mitigates consumer fit uncertainty. Beyond asking whether the deployment of physical showrooms can improve the retailer's profit and which assortment strategy is more profitable for the retailer, our analysis also addresses the questions of how the showroom deployment strategy impacts the product prices and the information service provision. The main findings are threefold. First, the effect of physical showroom deployment on retailer's performance is determined by the showroom feasibility. A high level of showroom feasibility (i.e., relatively low setup cost and high proportion of local consumers) is more likely to increase the profit of the retailer who establishes physical showrooms, and vice versa. Second, the profitability of different assortment strategies is closely related to consumers’ showrooming behaviors (i.e., intra-product showrooming and inter-product showrooming). Whether or not the partial assortment strategy is more profitable than the full assortment strategy is determined by the intensity of consumer inter-product showrooming (or the weight of consumers’ valuation on the common attribute of different products). Third, our findings reveal that the expected return cost of pure-online shopping is critical to the retailer's omni-channel pricing and information service decisions. Our research provides implications for online retailers on how to benefit from offline information delivery and consumer showrooming behavior.

Oligopolistic contracting: Channel coordination under competition

AbstractWe study contracts between a single retailer and multiple suppliers of two substitutable products, where suppliers have fixed capacities and present the retailer cost contracts for their supplies. After observing the contracts, the retailer decides how much capacity to purchase from each supplier, to maximize profits from the purchased capacity from the suppliers plus his possessed inventory (endowment). This is modeled as a noncooperative, nonzero‐sum game, where suppliers, or principals, move simultaneously as leaders and the retailer, the common agent, is the sole follower. We are interested in the form of the contracts in equilibrium, their effect on the total supply chain profit, and how the profit is split between the suppliers and the retailer. Under mild assumptions, we characterize the set of all equilibrium contracts and discuss all‐unit and marginal‐unit quantity discounts as special cases. We also show that the supply chain is coordinated in equilibrium with a unique profit split between the retailer and the suppliers. Each supplier's profit is equal to the marginal contribution of her capacity to supply chain profits in equilibrium. The retailer's profit is equal to the total revenue collected from the market minus the payments to the suppliers and the associated sales costs.

Sustainable inventory system with controllable non-instantaneous deterioration and environmental emission rates

Abstract In today’s environment, it is difficult to be successful without considering sustainability. The effects of global warming are becoming more observable in daily life. Supply chain activities are important sources of environmental emissions. This effect increases concerns to control emissions through the development of a supply chain inventory model. A replenishment problem based on joint pricing, dynamic investment in environmental cost, order cost, preservation technology cost, and optimal replenishment times for a non-instantaneous deteriorating item is considered as a way to maximize retailer profit. In this problem, the demand rate depends on the stock and selling price. An Algorithm is used to find the optimum solution of the supply chain inventory problem, which determines the selling price, preservation technology investment cost, environmental emission cost, order cost, and replenishment cycle time. Theoretical analysis of the optimal properties of the proposed model is provided, and then solution methods are proposed. Numerical analysis is conducted to show the application of the model. Managerial implications are given to practitioner. This study demonstrates that the proposed model could be applied under real-world situations.

NON-COOPERATIVE TWO-ECHELON SUPPLY CHAINS WITH A FOCUS ON SOCIAL RESPONSIBILITY

To cooperate or not is one of the most challenging issues of supply chain management era. If the supply chain is managed optimally, the entire profitability increases. Meanwhile, corporate Social Responsibility (hereafter CSR) is defined as the social and ethical behavior of supply chain members against stakeholders such as shareholders, final customers, employees and executives. Moreover, the observance of the social responsibility obligations is of great importance for consumers and shareholders of companies. The decisions of the supply chain’s members play a direct role in determining the profits of each. These decisions are in conflict with other members in a competitive environment. In this paper, the contradictory variables encompasses the cost resulting from the performance of corporate social responsibility, inventory, shortage, advertising and pricing in a two-level supply chain, consisting a manufacturer and a retailer. After identifying the quantitative variables for measuring the social responsibility using Delphi-Fuzzy methods and Interpretive Structural Modeling, the most important and influential variable of measuring the social responsibility performance (forced labor ratio) has been selected. Subsequently, after modeling the profit function of each player, optimal results were emanated according to the bargaining power of each member and based on Nash and Stackelberg games. Afterwards, with numerical examples, the optimization and sensitivity analysis of social responsibility in each model has been discussed. The results indicate that the profit of manufacturer and retailer reduces by increasing the proportion of forced labor. Based upon Nash equilibrium, the manufacturer’s profit decreases with a slight slope; nonetheless, on retailer and manufacturer leadership models, the profit decreases with a slight increase of the forced labor.

Pricing Decisions and Provider Choice on Extended Warranty Service in Supply Chain

This article constructed a manufacturer-leading supply chain system considering the extended warranty service (EW) with a single manufacturer and a single retailer to study the influence of service cost on the choice of the EW provider. First, this article analyzed retail pricing, EW pricing, EW quality, the manufacturer's profit, the retail's profit and the total system profit in Model M and Model R. Then, the article analyzed the influence of service cost on the choice of the EW provider. Finally, it shows that if only part of consumers purchases the product with the EW, the manufacturer benefits from EW provided by the retailer. However, the retailer has to balance the ratio of the service cost coefficient. Furthermore, all consumers purchase the product with the EW, both the manufacturer and the retailer has to balance the ratio of service cost coefficient between manufacturer and retailer.

Pricing Strategy in Dual-Channel Supply Chains with Loss-Averse Consumers

In this paper, loss-averse consumer behavior during purchase decision-making process in the dual-channel supply chain is modeled. Loss-averse consumers prefer avoiding losses to gain utility with respect to their reference point while purchasing the product. Two product categories are classified: (1) basic product and (2) luxury goods which have lower and higher reference utility to consumers, respectively. The research objective is to determine the optimal price strategy in dual-channel supply chains and discuss the decision behind loss-averse consumers. To model consumers’ valuation of a product, prospect theory is adopted to calculate the demands of each channel. Then, the optimal pricing strategy and the corresponding profits are found out in a Stackelberg game manner. The results encourage manufacturers of basic goods to engage in dual-channel strategy. Effect of “double marginalization” is reduced if consumers are loss-averse in the dual-channel supply chain. Furthermore, the direct channel online contributes larger demand to the manufacturer. However, manufacturers of luxury goods are not suggested for dual-channel strategy because the demand for direct channel online is negligible and the demand for the retail channel remains unchanged. Nevertheless, retailers cannot obtain benefit from dual-channel and as a result, the profit of basic goods retailers will be reduced.

Reselling or drop shipping: Strategic analysis of E-commerce dual-channel structures

Practical and anecdotal evidence indicates that the drop-shipping policy has been extensively adopted in electronic commerce (E-commerce) practice. However, how the different structures of dual channels affect the drop-shipping strategy of a retailer and supply chain efficiency has not been adequately investigated. To fill this research gap, this study performs a game-theoretic analysis of the drop-shipping strategy of a retailer under two practical dual-channel supply chain structures, namely, manufacturer-owned and retailer-owned online channel structures (MOS and ROS). Under each structure, the optimal pricing and the variations in profits are analytically presented with reselling or drop shipping in the corresponding channel. We show that under MOS, drop shipping can lower both wholesale and retail prices. By contrast, under ROS, drop shipping can decrease the offline retail price and the wholesale price but lower the online retail price only when the ratio of the unit fulfillment fee to overstock inventory is relatively low. The retailer prefers to adopt the drop-shipping policy under both MOS and ROS. Counterintuitively, the profits of both retailer and manufacturer are independent of the unit order fulfillment fee under MOS; however, under ROS, the profit of the manufacturer indicates a decreasing trend, whereas that of the retailer continuously increases with the unit order fulfillment fee. In terms of the performance of the entire supply chain, ROS dominates MOS when the proportion of brick-and-mortar (BM) shoppers is sufficiently high. In specific, beyond a certain service level, drop shipping in the retailer-owned online channel is preferred; otherwise, reselling in such channel is dominant. When the proportion of BM shoppers is moderate, MOS with drop shipping in the BM channel is the best choice for the entire supply chain. When the proportion of BM shoppers is low, MOS with reselling in the BM channel becomes the dominant option.