The Impact of Consumer Loss Aversion on Returns Policies and Supply Chain Coordination

Author(s):  
Gulay Samatli-Pac ◽  
Wenjing Shen ◽  
Xinxin Hu

Product return is a common after-sale service. Existing literature has assumed loss neutral consumers, while in practice consumers are often more sensitive to utility losses than gains, i.e., customers are often loss averse. In this paper, we study the impact of such loss aversion on the retailer's optimal pricing and returns policies. We analyze three scenarios where the seller offers no refund, full refund and partial refund for the returned products. Under each scenario, the seller determines the optimal price, quantity, and refund amount (under partial refund case) in order to maximize the expected profit. Our results demonstrate that consumer loss aversion leads a no-refund retailer to charge lower price and order smaller quantity, has no impact on a full-refund retailer, and results in a more lenient returns policy for a partial-refund retailer. We also find contracts that coordinate supply chains selling to loss averse consumers. Therefore, this article sheds some lights on how the management of returns policies should be adapted when consumers are loss averse.

2015 ◽  
Vol 2015 ◽  
pp. 1-9 ◽  
Author(s):  
Huan Zhang ◽  
Yang Liu ◽  
Jingsi Huang

Supply chain coordination models are developed in a two-echelon supply chain with double sided disruptions. In a supply chain system, the supplier may suffer from the product cost disruption and the retailer suffers from the demand disruption simultaneously. The purpose of this study is to design proper supply chain contracts, under which the supply chain with double sided disruption can be coordinated. Firstly, the centralized decision-making models are applied to find the optimal price and quantity under three cases as the baseline. The different cases are divided by the different relationship between the product cost disruption and the demand disruption. Secondly, two different types of contracts are introduced to coordinate the whole supply chain. One is all-unit wholesale quantity discount policy (AQDP) contract, and the other one is capacitated linear pricing policy (CLPP) contract. And it is found out that the gap between the demand disruption and the product cost disruption is the key factor to influence the supply chain coordination. Some numerical examples and sensitivity analysis are given to illustrate the models. The AQDP contracts are listed out under different cases to show how to use it under double sided disruptions.


2021 ◽  
Vol 2021 ◽  
pp. 1-13
Author(s):  
Chongfeng Lan ◽  
Jianfeng Zhu

New product presale is a strategic behavior of manufacturers to transfer inventory risks to consumers. The research purpose of this paper is to examine the presale discount, inventory, and service level decisions in an e-commerce supply chain, where the first period is the presale period and the second is the selling period for the new product. First, consumers were divided into two types—those who are risk averse and those who are not. Then, considering different presale discounts applied for new products, three presale strategy models were discussed: no-presale strategy, presale strategy with a moderate discount, and complete presale strategy, and the optimal decisions of e-commerce supply chain members were obtained under different valuations of the new product by consumers. Finally, the effects of the correlation coefficient between the numbers of the two types of consumers, the loss aversion degree of consumers, and the marginal profit in the sales period on the optimal discounted price and the maximum expected profit were analyzed. The conclusions of this article show that the presale strategy is not always optimal but depends on the parameters of the market and the type of consumers. For example, when the correlation coefficient between the two types of consumers is high, it is more profitable for the suppliers if they choose the presale strategy with a moderate discount, while e-commerce platforms tend to adopt the no-presale strategy. The optimal discounted price in the complete presale case is not necessarily lower than that in the moderately discounted presale case. If the marginal profit is high in the normal sales period or consumers are less averse to losses, suppliers are more likely to adopt the complete presale strategy. The research conclusions provide some theoretical reference for companies in the development of new product presale strategies in the e-commerce supply chain.


Author(s):  
Qin Zhang ◽  
Zijian He ◽  
Junhai Ma

Consumers' strategic purchasing behavior has a great influence on the pricing and sales of new products. In order to study the impact of strategic consumers on the sales of 5G mobile phones, we establish a two-period pricing model. The supply chain contains two manufacturers, a communications operator and a mobile phone retailer. Cases where two manufacturers have the same or different pricing rights are researched by using the Stackelberg game and the Nash game model. Our research results are as follows:(1) We obtain the optimal 5G communication fees in two periods and find out how they change with the proportion of consumers changing. (2) We figure out the profits of the supply chain in two periods and analyze them. We find that the communication operator earns more than the others most of the time. (3) We investigate how the proportion of strategic consumer impact on supply chain profits and conclude that the optimal price and demand in a period will decrease as the proportion of consumers who only purchase products in the other period increases.


Mathematics ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 8 (4) ◽  
pp. 586
Author(s):  
Wei Liu ◽  
Shiji Song ◽  
Ying Qiao ◽  
Han Zhao

This paper studies the supply chain coordination where the retailer is loss-averse, and a combined buyback and quantity flexibility contract is introduced. The loss-averse retailer’s objective is to maximize the Conditional Value-at-Risk of utility. It is shown the combined contract can coordinate the chain and a unique coordinating wholesale price exists if the confidence level is below a threshold. Moreover, the retailer’s optimal order quantity, expected utility and coordinating wholesale price are decreasing in loss aversion and confidence levels, respectively. We also find that when the contract parameters are restricted, the combined contract may coordinate the supply chain even though neither of its component contracts coordinate the chain.


2013 ◽  
Vol 2013 ◽  
pp. 1-11 ◽  
Author(s):  
Wei Xu ◽  
Zhaotong Lian ◽  
Xifan Yao

Motivated by the complex product with the feature about error-prone assembly system and supply chain inventory inaccuracy, this paper elaborates on the impact of information technology investment on complex product by establishing a three-stage supply chain model involving two suppliers, one manufacturer, and retailer which carried out Stackelberg games. In addition, it not only compares the manufacturer and the retailer’s optimal decision and maximum profit under the situation of the information asymmetry and free information sharing, but also analyzes their market behavior and changes in market performance. Meanwhile, it points out that the downstream in supply chain masters more information about market demands compared to the upstream one. The optimal cost threshold values of technology investment are also examined both for the centralized and the decentralized scenarios utilizing quantitative and modeling methods. By analyzing and comparing the optimal profit with or without investment on information technology, it establishes a supply chain coordination model which boosts the application of information technology. At the same time, it offers the conditions on which the upstream and downstream enterprises can coordinate with one another. The results of this paper have contributed significantly to making the price and ordering decisions on whether RFID should be adopted among members of the supply chain. Finally, we present numerical analyses, and several extensions of the model are considered as well.


2018 ◽  
Vol 35 (02) ◽  
pp. 1840008 ◽  
Author(s):  
Chunlin Luo ◽  
Xin Tian ◽  
Xiaobing Mao ◽  
Qiang Cai

This paper addresses the operational decisions and coordination of the supply chain in the presence of risk aversion, where the risk averse retailer’s performance is measured by a combination of the expected profit and conditional value-at-risk (CVaR). Such performance measure reflects the desire of the retailer to maximize the expected profit on one hand and to control the downside risk of the profit on the other hand. The impact of risk aversion on the supply chain’s decision and performance is also explored. To overcome the inefficiency due to the double marginalization and the aggravation resulting from risk aversion, we investigate the buy-back contract to coordinate the supply chain. Such contract can largely increase the supply chain’s profit, especially when the retailer is more risk averse. Lastly, we extend such risk measure to the widely-used business model nowadays — platform selling model, and explore the impact of the allocation rule on the manufacturer’s decision.


Author(s):  
Guangdong Liu ◽  
Tianjian Yang ◽  
Yao Wei ◽  
Xuemei Zhang

In order to investigate supply chain coordination and decision under customer balking and stochastic demand, the article considers a two-echelon supply chain consisting of one manufacturer with risk-neutral and one retailer with risk-neutral and develops two models in a centralized and a decentralized system and the three contracts are designed to coordinate supply chain and the optimal price and customer balking strategies are obtained. The results show that the revenue and cost-sharing contract can coordinate supply chain under customer balking and price-dependent demand and achieve the Pareto-improvement; the expected sales quantity and expected reduced sales quantity are influenced conversely by the threshold of inventory and probability of a sale under customer balking. In addition, numerical analysis is given to verify the effectiveness of revenue and cost-sharing contract and the paper gives some managerial insights and puts forward to the future work at last.


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