多分销渠道下易变质产品的联合库存与定价模型

Joint pricing and inventory model for deteriorating items with multi-channel distribution system

研究了电子商务环境下零售商具有多分销渠道的联合库存与定价策略问题。有限计划期内,零售商从上游供应商订购易变质类产品后,通过实体商店满足传统销售渠道下的即期市场需求,同时利用网上商店满足在线销售渠道下的远期市场需求。当销售价格为在线渠道下市场需求率的主要影响因素而当前库存水平与销售价格则是传统渠道下市场需求率的主要影响因素时,针对零售商订购固定成本具有学习效应行为的情形,以计划期内的总利润最大为目标建立了优化模型。通过分析最优解的相关性质,设计了求得最优订购次数,最优订购时间以及最优销售价格的有效算法。最后对武汉市某零售连锁超市关于易变质水果的订购策略进行了实证分析,验证了理论结果并进一步得出了相关参数变化对于最优库存策略与销售价格的影响。

With the rapid development of E-commerce, an increased number of companies sell products online directly while continuing to sell through the traditional retailers. The presence of the online direct channel leads to the outcome that the supply chain distribution system is transformed from a single traditional channel to multiple channels. In this scenario, there are many new opportunities and challenges in the supply chain management area. In addition, multi-channel distribution issues have received considerable attention by many researchers. An effective inventory and price strategy plays an important role in improving the multi-channel supply chain performance because it can help companies increase the total profit and meet the market demand on time by providing high quality service. Comparing with the models in the related literatures, this paper considers a joint pricing and inventory control model for deteriorating items with multi-channel distribution system under E-commerce environment. In this model, the retailer is not only the executive of the traditional retail channel but also that of the on-line sale channel. In a finite planning horizon, the retailer first orders deterioration items from upstream supplier, and then uses the traditional retail and online channels to meet the instant demand and the forward demand, respectively. The demand rate in the online channel is a function of selling price while the demand rate in the traditional retailer channel is a function of selling price and on-hand inventory level. This study focuses on the optimal selling price and inventory policy with the goal of maximizing the total profit of the retailer in the finite planning horizon. Considering the learning effect of the fixed set-up cost in this system, this paper establishes a mixed-integer optimization model. By analyzing some optimal properties of the objective function, this study proved the existence and uniqueness of the optimal replenishment time points and the optimal selling price. By relaxing the number of replenishments to a continuous variable, the objective function is also proved to be a convex function of the number of replenishments. Hence an effective algorithm is designed to find the optimal solution of this problem. In addition, the inventory and price policy proposed in this paper is verified by conducting an empirical analysis of the replenishment policy for one kind of fruits in Zhongbai Storage of Wuhan. In summary, in order to meet the demands of multi-channel on time, an effective inventory and price strategy is the key of management for supply chain managers. Our study shows that there exists the optimal policy to maximize the total profit of the retailer. The conclusions will provide managers with an effective theoretical guidance to make decisions on setting the selling price, reducing the inventory cost, and improving the performance of supply chains.