This paper investigates an optimal decision problem in a single-period,two-stage supply chain with capacity reservation contract.At the beginning of the planning horizon,the retailer,who faces stochastic demand,reserves future capacity according to his forecasting of the demand.The supplier then constructs capacity.At the beginning of the selling season,the retailer updates the demand forecasting and places an order.When the retailer's demand is greater than the supplier's capacity,the supplier can meet the retailer's demand by outsourcing.We analyze the optimal decision of each player in both centralized and decentralized systems.Furthermore,under the case in which demand follows a uniform distribution,we obtain the closed-form optimal strategies of each player for both centralized and decentralized systems and conduct numerical studies to reveal additional conclusions.The numerical studies show that the optimal reservation capacity for the retailer and the optimal constructing capacity for the supplier in the decentralized system are both less than the optimal constructing capacity in the centralized system.Furthermore,we also find that the profit loss due to decentralization always exists and increases in indeterminacy.
The paper investigates the pricing decisions of two competing supply chains under the different information structures. Each retailer has private information about the market demand and has the right to decide whether or not to share the information with the manufacturer. Three demand-information structures, i.e., information sharing in both supply chains, information sharing in only one supply chain and information sharing in neither supply chain, are considered. We investigate the value of information by comparing the information structures, and find that the information value not only works in the channel directly, but also does in the competing channel indirectly. Information sharing in a supply chain always benefits its manufacturer, but hurts its retailer; while it benefits both the manufacturer and the retailer of competing supply chain, regardless of whether this competing supply chain has information sharing. From the perspective of channel, when the competition is more intense, information sharing in a supply chain makes this supply chain better off, and when the competition is less intense, the information sharing in a supply chain makes this supply chain worse off. However, it always makes the competing supply chain better off regardless of whether the competing supply chain has information sharing.
