Wholesale Pricing and Evolutionarily Stable Strategy in Duopoly Supply Chains with Social Responsibility

This paper analyzes manufacturers’ wholesale price decisions and the evolutionarily stable strategies of the retailers’ marketing behavior in duopoly supply chains, where each chain consists of one manufacturer and many retailers. Each retailer chooses one of two marketing strategies: social responsibility or non-social responsibility (i.e., a firm only cares about the benefits of its shareholders). We identify the conditions under which a strategy profile is evolutionarily stable. Furthermore, we investigate the manufacturers’ wholesale prices and find the following:(i) the retailer’s social responsibility decreases the unit wholesale price;(ii) when the degree of the retailer’s social responsibility is medium, the social responsibility of the retailer in a supply chain increases the profit of the retailer’s own manufacturer and decreases the profit of the rival’s manufacturer;otherwise, it decreases the profits of the two manufacturers;and (iii) when each retailer exhibits its social responsibility moderately, a triple-win situation can be achieved.

Evolutionary Stable Strategies for Supply Chains: Selfishness,Fairness, and Altruism

The management strategies of a firm are inevitable affected by individual behavior preferences. The effect of individual preference on the evolutionary dynamics for supply chains is studied by employing replicator dynamics. Each firm has three behavior preferences: selfishness, fairness, and altruism. Firstly, the case that the strategy set of manufacturers and retailers including two pure strategies is considered and the effect of preference parameter on the equilibrium outcome in the shortterm interaction is discussed. Secondly, the equilibrium state in the short-term is always disturbed because the change of the environment, firm’s structure, and so forth. Using the replicator dynamics,the evolutionary stable strategies of manufacturers and retailers in the long-term interaction are analyzed. Finally, the extend case that the strategy set of manufacturers and retailers include three pure strategies is investigated. These results are found that the strategy profile in which both manufacturer and retailer choose fairness or altruism, or one player chooses fair or altruistic strategy and the other player chooses selfish strategy may be evolutionary stable, the stability of these equilibria depends on the the preference parameters.