Replenishment Strategies for Micro-Retailers in Developing Countries

When formal distribution channels are absent in developing countries, micro-retailers travel a long distance to replenish their stocks directly from suppliers. This “informal” replenishment strategy is inefficient due to high imputed travel costs involved in the replenishment process. To improve efficiency, one “hybrid” replenishment strategy has emerged under which one of the micro-retailers in a neighborhood, while continuing its own retail business, also operates as a wholesaler to serve other micro-retailers in the neighborhood. A major obstacle for the transition from the informal strategy to the hybrid strategy is that the micro-retailers are reluctant to source from a wholesaler who also competes with them in the retail market. Thus, it is not clear when the micro-retailers adopt the hybrid strategy instead of the informal strategy. Meanwhile, the micro-retailers may prefer the “formal” strategy: a traditional replenishment strategy under which one of the micro-retailers relinquishes its retail business and operates purely as a wholesaler. We examine a situation when competing micro-retailers contemplate with the three potential aforementioned replenishment strategies. Our equilibrium analysis of the two-store model reveals that the dominant strategy is: (a) the hybrid strategy when the travel cost is high; (b) the formal strategy when the travel cost is medium; and (c) the informal strategy when the travel cost is low. This key insight is shown continue to hold when we extend the two-store model to incorporate other issues including: quantity discounts from the supplier, variable operating costs, price competition, local monopolies, and different decision sequences. One additional finding is that the transition from the informal strategy to the hybrid strategy could benefit consumers if the micro-retailers receive quantity discounts from the supplier. Furthermore, when there are more than two stores, we show that the formal strategy is never dominant. Moreover, when the number of stores increases, the hybrid strategy becomes more preferable to the informal strategy