Risk-averse Retailer Research Articles

Allocating Inventory Risk in Retail Supply Chains: Risk Aversion, Information Asymmetry, and Outside Opportunity

Problem definition: Recent global crises have caused unprecedented economic uncertainty and intensified retailers’ concerns over inventory risks. Mitigating inventory risks and incentivizing retailer orders is critical to managing retail supply chains and restoring their norms after severe impacts. We study the allocation of inventory risk using contracts in a retail supply chain with a risk-neutral manufacturer and a risk-averse retailer. We consider two factors that affect the effectiveness of contracting: (1) asymmetric risk aversion information—retailers’ attitudes are typically diverse and unknown to the manufacturer, and (2) uncertain outside opportunity—retailers typically face a volatile external business environment. Methodology/results: With a game-theoretic model that captures the interaction among risk aversion, information asymmetry, and outside opportunity, we derive the contracting equilibrium under two widely adopted risk allocation schemes—push (i.e., the retailer bears the inventory risk) and pull (i.e., the manufacturer bears the inventory risk) contracts. Contrary to the conventional wisdom that pull contracts are more effective in risk mitigation, we show that push contracts may induce larger expected order quantities and achieve the highest supply chain efficiency due to the interaction of asymmetric risk aversion information and risky outside opportunities. We also find that the manufacturer may obtain higher profits with push contracts when both the heterogeneity in the retailer’s risk attitude and the risk of the outside opportunity are sufficiently high. In addition, when the risk of the outside opportunity is in a medium range, the push contract allows the manufacturer to fully eliminate the information rent and achieve the supply chain’s first-best outcomes. We further evaluate the effects of product profitability and demand uncertainty and generalize the retailer’s risk measure to any coherent risk measure. Managerial implications: Our analysis highlights the importance of modeling asymmetric risk aversion information and risky outside opportunities in analyzing supply chain contracting. When considering these practical factors, allocating more inventory risks to a risk-averse retailer may be better than a risk-neutral manufacturer. Our results provide novel insights into the selection of proper contract types for managing inventory risks in retail supply chains. Supplemental Material: The online appendix is available at https://doi.org/10.1287/msom.2022.0624 .

Impact of deferred payment on decisions and coordination in a dual-channel supply Chain with a risk-averse retailer

Impact of deferred payment on decisions and coordination in a dual-channel supply Chain with a risk-averse retailer

Trade credit contracting in a risk-averse supply chain under adverse selection and moral hazard

Trade credit, as an effective tool for integrating and coordinating material, information, and financial flows in supply chain management, is becoming increasingly widespread. We explore how a manufacturer can design optimal trade credit contracts when a risk-averse retailer hides its sales cost information (adverse selection) and selling effort level (moral hazard). We develop incentive models for a risk-averse supply chain when adverse selection and moral hazard coexist, which are then compared with the results under single information asymmetry (moral hazard). Moreover, we analyze the effects of private information and risk-aversion coefficient on contract parameters, selling effort level and the profit or utility of the supply chain. The study shows that when the degree of retailer’s risk aversion is within a certain range, reasonable trade credit contracts designed by the manufacturer can effectively induce the retailer to report its real sales cost and encourage it to exert appropriate effort. Furthermore, we find that the optimal trade credit period, optimal transfer payment, and retailer’s optimal sales effort level under dual information asymmetry are less than under single information asymmetry. Numerical analysis are conducted to demonstrate the effects of the parameters on decisions and profits.

基于RFID技术的风险规避型双渠道供应链投资决策研究

基于RFID技术的风险规避型双渠道供应链投资决策研究

Weather rebate contracts for different risk attitudes of supply chain members

Firms that deal with weather-sensitive products are often exposed to weather risk. How a weather rebate contract can be implemented to improve the performance of a supplier-retailer supply chain is investigated. The supplier offers a weather rebate to the retailer to compensate for the loss of sales due to weather risk. Depending on certain weather conditions, the retailer receives the rebate if it orders beyond a predefined ordering quantity. Depending on its risk attitude, the supplier uses weather derivatives to minimize the downside risk. The performance of weather rebate contracts is analyzed for three cases: risk-neutral supplier and risk-averse retailer, risk-averse supplier and risk-neutral retailer, and risk-averse supplier and risk-averse retailer. Conditional Value at Risk (CVaR) is used as the risk measure. The supply chain coordination under weather risk is investigated, and the specific conditions of a weather rebate contract leading to a Pareto-improving solution for both parties are obtained. To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first study that investigates the weather rebate contract incorporating the risk attitude of the firms using a cooling degree days (CDD)/heating degree days (HDD)-based rebate structure. A comparative analysis between the weather rebate and wholesale price contracts is carried out based on the actual temperature and demand data. The results show that the weather rebate contract outperforms the regular wholesale price contract in all three cases. The study also demonstrates how to use weather derivatives to improve the performance of a supply chain dealing with weather-sensitive products.

Coordinating a three-level contract farming supply chain with option contracts considering risk-averse farmer and retailer.

We considered a three-level contract farming supply chain comprising a risk-averse farmer, a risk-neutral supplier, and a risk-averse retailer. The farmer plants and grows fresh agricultural products with yield uncertainty, the supplier is the leader of the supply chain and the designer of the contracts, and the retailer sells processed products with random demand. Under CVaR criterion, this paper discusses three option contracts between the supplier and the retailer, as well as wholesale price contracts or replenishment cost-sharing contracts between the supplier and the farmer. Results show that when the farmer is risk-neutral, option contracts with or without replenishment cost-sharing contracts can maximize the total profit and increase the profits of all members simultaneously. When the farmer and the retailer are risk-averse, only option contracts with replenishment cost-sharing contracts can ensure supply chain full coordination and Pareto improvement by adjusting the option parameters and making the farmer's sharing ratio equal to his risk aversion coefficient. Moreover, through numerical analysis, we discovered that the interval of the Pareto improvement decreases with the retailer's risk aversion coefficient and the quantity loss rate, and increases with the farmer's risk aversion coefficient. The supplier will not be able to increase his own profits when the loss rate is excessively large. Therefore, the leader should consider the risk aversion degree of all parties and the quantity loss rate of fresh agricultural products before choosing contracts.

Insuring a Small Retail Electric Provider’s Procurement Cost Risk in Texas

Motivated by the relatively infrequent but very large price spikes in the day-ahead and real-time energy markets operated by the Electric Reliability Council of Texas, this paper proposes an insurance that a small and risk-averse retailer in Texas (i.e., a retail electric provider (REP)) may buy to prevent financial insolvency caused by inadequate risk management. It also demonstrates the insurance’s practical design, pricing, and implementation. As participation in the REP’s procurement auction is voluntary, the insurance is mutually beneficial for the REP and the insurance seller. Hence, the proposed insurance is a newly developed wholesale market product that deserves consideration by REPs in Texas and competitive retailers elsewhere.

Effects of Supply Reliability, Risk Aversion, and Wealth on Retailer’s Optimal Order Strategy

This study examines the effects of supply reliability, risk aversion, and wealth on the optimal order strategy of retailers in the case of uncertain demand by measuring the degree of risk aversion. A more practical model of optimal ordering strategy is proposed, considering supply reliability, demand uncertainty, risk aversion, and retailer wealth, in which two random variables, supply reliability factors and demand, are introduced into the retailer’s function of expected utility. To avoid nonconvergence at both ends, the demand follows a triangular rather than a normal distribution. It is found that the optimal order quantity will increase with the improvement of supply reliability when the risk-averse degree is fixed. The results also show that the optimal order quantity of risk-averse retailers is smaller than that of risk-neutral retailers. Additionally, the optimal order quantity for the risk-averse retailer decreases as the degree of risk aversion increases, when supply reliability is fixed. Further research shows that the retailer is a constant absolute risk aversion (CARA). That means retailer’s wealth has nothing to do with the risk aversion and changes in the retailer’s wealth will not affect the retailer’s optimal order quantity. This study provides valuable insights for sustainable supply chain management and marketing.

Unfair and Risky? Profit Allocation in Closed-Loop Supply Chains by Cooperative Game Approaches

Behavioral factors (i.e., risk aversion and fairness concern) are considered for profit allocation in a closed-loop supply chain. This paper studies a two-echelon closed-loop supply chain (CLSC) consisting of a risk-neutral manufacturer, a risk-averse fairness-neutral retailer, and a risk-neutral retailer having fairness concerns. Cooperative game analysis is used to characterize equilibriums under five scenarios: a centralized, a decentralized and three partially allied models. Analytical results confirm that even when factoring in retailers’ risk aversion and fairness concern, the centralized model still outperforms decentralized. This paper makes a numerical study on the effects of risk aversion and fairness concern on profit distribution under these five models. It reveals that the impact of the risk aversion parameter and fairness concern parameter is dynamic, not always positive or negative. These research results provide helpful insights for CLSC managers to find out available choices and feasible ways to achieve fair profit allocations.

Optimal decisions for green supply chain with a risk-averse retailer under government intervention

This paper investigates the effects of the financial subsidy and product access policies on the performance of green supply chains (GSCs). Based on the game theory and preference theory, we study a green supply chain consisting of a risk-neutral manufacturer and a risk-averse retailer under government interventions from different power structures. The result reveals that green production can be effectively promoted only when product access exceeds a certain threshold. The Nash equilibrium game has the highest greenness and expected utility of GSC. It also shows that regardless of the market structure and government intervention policy, the retailer’s risk aversion is positively correlated with the highest level of product access. Moreover, once effective product access is implemented, the retailer’s risk aversion does not affect the optimal greenness of manufacturer production. Besides, compared with other intervention policies, the highest optimal product greenness exists in the scenario of financial subsidy with effective product access. The study suggests that the government needs to set certain green standards when implementing subsidy policies and promoting the risk aversion of retailers.

Deterrence effect of risk aversion information sharing on supplier encroachment

This paper investigates the incentive of a fashion retailer to share her risk aversion information unde[r potential supplier encroachment. In fashion industries, retailers tend to be risk averse when facing uncertain market demand and the threat of supplier encroachment. Although conventional wisdom suggests that a risk-averse retailer should not expose her risk concerns to the upstream supplier, our results show that the retailer may voluntarily share private risk aversion information ex ante to deter supplier encroachment when her selling cost advantage is in an intermediate range, or trade information for some side payment when her cost advantage is small. However, when the retailer’s cost advantage is large or the supplier ex ante encroaches on the market, the retailer will never divulge private information regardless of whether the supplier offers a side payment. Moreover, we examine the retailer’s incentive for information disclosure from an ex post perspective. Specifically, when the supplier’s selling cost is either high or low, the unobservability of information acquisition enables the retailer to selectively withhold unfavourable risk aversion information; otherwise, the firms are engaged in a tacit bargaining, and their efforts to reach a consensus thwart the supplier’s incentive for encroachment.

How increasing relative risk aversion affects retailer orders under coordinating contracts

We analyze how risk aversion affects the order-quantity decisions of a retailer for two coordinating contracts - buyback and real option. The retailer faces uncertain customer demand and makes a single order-quantity decision to maximize expected utility. We show that for a retailer with increasing relative risk aversion, orders decline in the expected profit share of the supply chain, which is determined by the parametrization of the contract. We use an exponential utility function to model a retailer with increasing relative risk aversion and test our model on existing experimental data as well as on data from a validation experiment. In our validation experiment, we link order quantities to certainty equivalents and establish risk aversion as an underlying cause for the deviation from profit maximizing quantities. Additionally, we find that under real option contracts, risk averse retailers order more than under buyback contracts.

Optimization and coordination in a service-constrained supply chain with the bidirectional option contract under conditional value-at-risk

<p style='text-indent:20px;'>This paper investigates the optimal operational decisions for the risk-neutral supplier and the risk-averse retailer in the supply chain with a service requirement under the conditional value-at-risk. Specifically, the optimal order and production policies with and without the bidirectional option contract are derived. Further, this paper shows that the optimal conditional value-at-risk of the retailer is non-increasing in the service requirement, while the optimal expected profit of the supplier is non-decreasing in the service requirement. When the service requirement is binding, the optimal conditional value-at-risk of the retailer is increasing in the risk aversion, while the optimal expected profit of the supplier is decreasing in the risk aversion. In addition, it is shown that with the bidirectional option contract, the service level provided by the retailer is equivalent to (higher than) that without them when the service requirement is (not) binding. Finally, this paper demonstrates that the bidirectional option contract can mitigate the effect of risk aversion on the retailer's order quantity, benefit both the retailer and supplier, and improve the performance of the supply chain. Numerical experiments are conducted to further confirm our results.</p>

Agent-based retail competition and portfolio optimization in liberalized electricity markets: A study involving real-world consumers

The liberalization of energy markets brought full competition to the electric power industry. In the wholesale sector, producers and retailers submit bids to day-ahead markets, where prices are uncertain, or alternatively, they sign bilateral contracts to hedge against pool price volatility. In the retail sector, retailers compete to sign bilateral contracts with end-use customers. Typically, such contracts are subject to a high-risk premium—that is, retailers request a high premium to consumers to cover their potential risk of trading energy in wholesale markets. Accordingly, consumers pay a price for energy typically higher than the wholesale market price. This article addresses the optimization of the portfolios of retailers, which are composed of end-use customers. To this end, it makes use of a risk-return optimization model based on the Markowitz theory. The article presents a simulation-based study conducted with the help of the MATREM system, involving 6 retailer agents, with different risk preferences, and 312 real-world consumers. The retailers select a pricing strategy and compute a tariff to offer to target consumers, optimize their portfolio of consumers using data from the Iberian market, sign bilateral contracts with consumers, and compute their target return during contract duration. The results support the conclusion that retail markets are more favourable to risk-seeking retailers, since substantial variations in return lead to small variations in risk. However, for a given target return, risk-averse retailers consider lower risk portfolios, meaning that they may obtain higher returns in both favourable and unfavourable situations.

Pricing strategy of dual-channel supply chain with a risk-averse retailer considering consumers’ channel preferences

Pricing strategy of dual-channel supply chain with a risk-averse retailer considering consumers’ channel preferences

Optimal Procurement Strategy for Supply Chain with Trade Credit and Backorder under CVaR Criterion

Some capital-constrained and risk-averse retailers may unable to obtain financing from banks due to insufficient collateral and high loan costs, so some retailers tend to use trade credit financing to ease their financial pressure. For the two echelon supply chain composed of a well-funded supplier and a capital-constrained retailer with risk-averse preference, a trade credit strategy model with the supplier-led is established in this paper. By analyzing both parties’ benefits, we derive the model solution and provide optimal decisions to all petitioners. The results obtained in this paper show that the optimum order quantity under the Conditional Value-at-Risk (CVaR) criterion declines w.r.t. the confidence level, and the wholesale price of the supplier increases w.r.t. the confidence level. The reason is that when the retailer makes fewer orders, the supplier will correspondingly increase the wholesale price to maximize their profit. On the other hand, the ordering policy with allowing backorder will make the retailer place fewer orders. Finally, the proposed model is indicated by the given numerical experiments.

Complex Dynamics in a Closed-Loop Supply Chain with Risk Aversion and Fairness Concerns Under Supply Disruption

In this paper, we consider a closed-loop supply chain (CLSC) consisting of two suppliers, one manufacturer, one risk-averse retailer and one fair-caring third-party in the presence of supply disruption. We focus on establishing a dynamic Stackelberg game model with bounded rational expectation and analyzing the game evolution process. The effects of key parameters on the Nash equilibrium solutions and their stability are investigated, as well as the complex dynamical behaviors of the CLSC system are explored by using the stability region, bifurcation graph, the largest Lyapunov exponent (LLE), strange attractors, etc. Moreover, the performance of channel members under different values of parameters is researched by utilizing the (average) expected profits or utilities index. The analysis results reveal that the excessive fast adjustment speed of the manufacturer will lead to the system losing stability and falling into chaos. Also, the retailer’s risk aversion and the third party’s fairness concerns have a destabilization effect on the Nash equilibrium point, while the possibility of supply disruption has different effects on the scope of the adjustment speed of decision variables of the manufacturer. Furthermore, in most cases, an over the top adjustment speed of the manufacturer is disadvantageous to all the channel members for more expected profits, but the third-party can achieve a better performance when the system is in periodic state. Finally, the time-delay feedback control method is proposed to eliminate the system chaos.

Research on Coordination of Fresh Agricultural Product Supply Chain considering Fresh-Keeping Effort Level under Retailer Risk Avoidance

Considering that the demand for fresh agricultural products is affected by product freshness and price, a two-level fresh agricultural product supply chain decision model consisting of a risk-neutral supplier and a risk-averse retailer is constructed. In order to increase consumer demand for fresh agricultural products, the supplier will make appropriate efforts to preserve the freshness of agricultural products. The optimal fresh-keeping effort level of the supplier and the optimal pricing decision of the retailer under the centralized decision-making and decentralized decision-making modes were studied, respectively; through the design of traditional cost-sharing contracts, traditional cost and revenue-sharing contracts, and cost-sharing and compensation strategies, the supplier was encouraged to improve their fresh-keeping effort. The research shows that the traditional cost-sharing contract and the traditional cost-benefit sharing contract cannot coordinate the supply chain. Under the strategy of cost sharing and compensation, when the amount of compensation meets certain conditions, the coordination of supply chain can be realized. Finally, the important parameters of the model are analyzed by numerical simulation.

Optimal portfolio financing selection in a capital-constrained supply chain with risk-averse members

ABSTRACT We first consider a supplier-retailer supply chain in which only the capital-constrained retailer is risk-averse while the supplier and the bank both are risk-neutral. The newsvendor-like retailer may fund its business by two portfolio financing schemes to satisfy uncertain market demand: (1) bank loans and the supplier’s equity investment (BCF-SI) and (2) bank loans and the supplier’s credit guarantee (BCF-SG). Using CVaR criterion, we model the behaviour of the risk-averse retailer to analytically derive the portfolio financing equilibrium in a Stackelberg supplier-led game separately for two portfolio financing schemes. We characterize the conditions under which the supplier and the retailer reach Pareto improvement under two portfolio financing schemes compared with the non-financing benchmark. Moreover, we extend the model to the case in that the supplier and retailer both are risk-averse while only the bank is risk-neutral to further investigate the impact of risk aversion on the optimal financing scheme selection. The numerical examples verify our theoretical results.

Supply Chain Coordination with a Risk-Averse Retailer and the Call Option Contract in the Presence of a Service Requirement

This paper investigates a supply chain consisting of a single risk-neutral supplier and a single risk-averse retailer with the call option contract and a service requirement, where the retailer’s objective is to maximize the Conditional Value-at-Risk about profit. The optimal ordering quantity of the retailer and the optimal production quantity of the supplier are derived with the call option contract in the presence of a service requirement. Furthermore, by investigating the effect of the service level and the risk aversion on the supply chain, it is found that the retailer’s optimal Conditional Value-at-Risk is non-increasing in the service requirement and increasing in the risk aversion, while the supplier’s optimal expected profit is non-decreasing in the service and decreasing in the risk aversion. In addition, this paper demonstrates the impact of contract parameters on the service-constrained supply chain, and finds that the retailer’s optimal Conditional Value-at-Risk may be increasing, constant or decreasing in unit exercise price. Finally, with the call option contract, a distribution-free coordination condition is derived to achieve the Pareto improvement under Conditional Value-at-Risk criterion in the presence of a service requirement.