Coordination and competition in a duopoly with two-manufacturer and two-retailer with wholesale-price contract and demand uncertainty

Abstract

In this research, we analyze a supply chain involving two competing manufacturers that sells their product through two common competing retailers. The manufacturers’ products are the same but with different brand in market. The retailers face stochastic demand where demand is a decreasing function of price with additive uncertain part. Manufacturers compete on supplying orders where retailers compete on selling price. Each manufacturer set wholesale price contract with retailers similarly. We examine supply chain coordination with wholesale price contract under competition and demand uncertainty. The analytical results show that under coordination condition, manufacturers do not obtain any positive profit and consequently the retailers intend to increase wholesale prices. On the other hand, manufacturers can increase wholesale prices until the retailers’ profit becomes zero. Hence, with a numerical study for actual cases, it is found that changing demand sensitivity and competition intensity affect the optimal decisions of ordering and pricing. Moreover, increasing in competition sensitivity, increase the supply chains’ efficiency, stocking level and selling price. The concluding remarks show that further investigation is required for possibility of coordination under competition by other contractual mechanisms.

Keywords

• supply chain coordination
• competition
• pricing
• wholesale price contract
• supply chain efficiency.