We consider a classic periodic-review perishable inventory system with a fixed product lifetime and zero replenishment lead time under a first-in-first-out issuance policy. Unsatisfied demand can be either lost or backlogged. The objective is to minimize the long-run average holding, penalty and...

A total minimum commitment contract is a supply contract under which a firm commits to buying a minimum quantity of a product from its supplier during the contract duration (e.g., one year). Such contracts are widely used in industries, because they provide the buyer with flexibility in terms of...

Recent years have witnessed the rapid development of online auctions. Currently, some online auctions, such as eBay, introduce a proxy bidding policy, under which bidders submit their maximum bids and delegate to a proxy agent to automatically outbid other competitors for the top bidder, whereas...

Two-invoice mechanism (TIM) was introduced by the Chinese government with the purpose of reducing pharmaceutical prices. This paper studies the impact of the TIM on a pharmaceutical supply chain consisting of a manufacturer, buyer, and agent (in the absence of a TIM) or a third-party (in the...

Purpose: The authors investigate the manufacturer's choice of discount schemes in a supply chain with competing retailers. Design/methodology/approach: Using a game-theoretic model, the authors build two discount frameworks and compare and analyze the effects of different discount schemes on the...

Purpose - The advanced technology enables retailers to develop customer profile analysis (CPA) to implement personalized pricing. However, considering the efficiency of developing CPA, the benefit to different retailers of implementing more precise personalized pricing remains unclear. Thus,...

We consider a firm (e.g., retailer) selling a single nonperishable product over a finite-period planning horizon. Demand in each period is stochastic and price-dependent, and unsatisfied demands are backlogged. At the beginning of each period, the firm determines its selling price and inventory...

We consider a periodic-review inventory control problem for the Multi-Warehouse Multi-Store system with lost sales. We focus on a time horizon during which the system receives no external replenishment. Specifically, each warehouse has a finite initial inventory at the beginning of the horizon,...