季节性产品销售商动态串货搏弈模型

Analysis of a dynamic inventory transshipment game between two retailers of seasonal products

基于现实中处于竞争状态的销售商之间广泛存在的"串货"现象,本文研究了同一市场上销售同一种季节性或时尚性产品的两个销售商之间的最优动态串货策略.在研究的问题中,双方都持有一定数量的初始库存,产品库存在销售过程中不能补给.在一方库存销售完毕之后,可以借助于对方的串货来满足顾客需求;然而对方基于自身利益的考虑,有权拒绝串货.基于一个离散时间动态规划模型,分析了两个销售商的最优串货策略,刻画了销售商收益函数的结构性质,将该分权系统与追求整体利益最大化的集权系统进行了对比.数值实验表明:虽然串货能有效增加销售商各自的利益,但是他们之间的竞争会带来较大的整体利益损失.

Motivated by the common practice that competitive retailers usually transship inventories between each other to increase sales, this paper studies the optimal transshipment policies of two retailers selling a same kind of seasonal or fashionable products in a same market. In the problem under investigation, before the selling period begins, both retailers hold a certain quantity of initial inventories which are non-replenishable during the selling process. Once one of the retailers has run out of its inventory, it can rely on the inventory that is transshipped from the other retailer to fulfill its customer. However, as a self-revenue maximizer, the other retailer can reject any transshipment requests. Based on a discrete-time dynamic programming model, we study the optimal transshipment policies of the two retailers, and characterize the structural properties of their revenue functions. Moreover, we conduct a comparison of the decentralized system with the centralized system where both retailers seek to maximize their joint revenue. Numerical experiments show that though transshipments can increase revenue to both retailers, however, the competition between the retailers can induce a great total welfare loss.