International Journal of Industrial Engineering & Production Research

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Pricing and advertising are two important marketing strategies in the supply chain management which lead to customer demand’s increase and therefore higher profit for members of supply chains. This paper considers advertising, and pricing decisions simultaneously for a three-level supply chain with one supplier, one manufacturer and one retailer. The amount of market demand is influenced by pricing and advertising. In this paper, three well-known approaches in the game theory including the Nash, Stackelberg and Cooperative games are exploited to study the effects of pricing and advertising decisions on the supply chain. Using these approaches, we identify optimal decisions in each case for the supplier, the manufacturer and the retailer. Also, we compare the outcomes decisions among the mentioned games. The results show that, the Cooperative and the Nash games have the highest and lowest advertising expenditure, respectively. The price level in the Nash game is more than the Stackelberg game for all three levels, and the retailer price in the Stackelberg and Cooperative games are equal. The system has the highest profit in the Cooperative game. Finally, the Nash bargaining model will be presented and explored to investigate the possibilities for profit sharing.

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Flexible and dynamic supply chain network design problem has been studied by many researchers during past years. Since integration of short-term and long-term decisions in strategic planning leads to more reliable plans, in this paper a multi-objective model for a sustainable closed-loop supply chain network design problem is proposed. The planning horizon of this model contains multiple strategic periods so that the structure of supply chain can be changed dynamically during the planning horizon. Furthermore, in order to have an integrated design, several short-term decisions are considered besides strategic network design decision. One of these short-term decisions is determining selling price and buying price in the forward and reverse logistics of supply chain, respectively. Finally, an augmented e-constraint method is used to transform the problem to a single-objective model and an imperialist competitive algorithm is presented to solve large scale problems. The results’ analysis indicates the efficiency of the proposed model for the integrated and dynamic supply chain network design problem. 

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This paper considers the advertising, pricing, and service decisions simultaneously to coordinate the supply chain with a manufacturer and a retailer. The amount of market demand is influenced by advertising, pricing and service decisions. In this paper, three well-known approaches to the game theory, including the Nash, the Stackelberg-retailer, and the cooperative game are exploited to study the effects of these policies on the supply chain. Using these approaches, we identify optimal strategies in each case for the manufacturer and the retailer. Then, we will compare the outcomes of each strategy thus developed. The results show that, compared with the Nash game, the Stackelberg-retailer game yields higher profits for the retailer, the manufacturer, and the whole system. The cooperative game yields the highest profits. Finally, the Nash bargaining model will be presented and explored to investigate the possibilities for profit sharing.

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Todays, the variety of new products will raise the competition between manufacturers. Product portfolio management (PPM) as a suitable tool can influence the customer’s taste and increase the profit of firms. In this paper, the factors of PPM, production planning and a two-player continuous game theory are considered simultaneously. Some constraints are also assumed such as the availability of raw materials and the demand of each product based on some criteria. Two firms have same offered products and compete with each other. The relationships between two producers will be modeled by a non-zero two- player game. A numerical example is presented too. The proposed model is single period that the inventory is equal to zero in the start and finish of period. The objective functions show the profit of products and the constraints are included the utility of products for each customer, the market's share as a function of the probability of customer selection for each section, the type of distribution function for sale quantity, the accessible quantity of the sum of used materials by two producers and etc.
The results shows that demand changing effects on the profit of two players, but effects more on the second player. Also the sale price changing effects on the profit of two players, but effects more on the first player. The obtained data shows that if extra sale price increase the profit of first player will increase while the profit of second player is constant approximately.

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A coalition loyalty program (CLP) is a business strategy employed by for-profit companies to increase or retain their customers. One of the operational challenges of these programs is how to choose the mechanism of coordination between business partners. This paper examines the role of revenue sharing contracts in the loyalty points supply chain of a CLP with stochastic advertising-dependent demand where the program operator (called the host) sells loyalty points to the partners of the program. The purpose of the study is to examine the effect of this coordination mechanism on the decisions and profits of the members of the chain using the Stackelberg game method and determine whether the presence of revenue sharing contracts benefits the chain members when the advertising is done by the host and when the advertising cost is shared between the host and its partners. The results show that when the host gives bonus points to end customers (advertising), revenue sharing contracts become a powerful incentive for the profitability of the host and its partners. The findings provide new insights into the management of CLPs, which can benefit business decision-makers.

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