Abstract

Consignment is a form of business arrangement, in which a vendor places goods at a retailer’s location without receiving payment until the products are sold. This paper examines consignment with consumer non-defective returns behaviour, where the upstream vendor makes a contract with the downstream retailer. The vendor decides what the consignment and refund prices are, and the retailer chooses the retail price. The vendor gets paid based on the sold units, salvages and returns. We analyze two contracts, called retailer and vendor managed consignment inventory (RMCI and VMCI, respectively), the only difference being that under RMCI, the retailer chooses the service level, and under VMCI, the vendor specifies it. We present precise solutions to VMCI for additive uncertainty and compare them to the multiplicative case. We prove that the vendor’s optimal return policy depends on a salvage value since if it is equal to zero, the vendor should not offer the return policy. We show that the channel may gain profit from the return policy for the positive salvage value. We demonstrate that the form of uncertainty and the presence of consumer returns considerably affect the solutions to the problems. As an extension, we give the results obtained under RMCI.

摘要

寄售是一种商业安排形式，其中卖方将商品放置在零售商的位置，直到产品被售出才收到付款。本文研究了具有消费者无缺陷退货行为的托运货物，其中上游供应商与下游零售商签订了合同。卖方决定什么是寄售和退款价格，零售商选择零售价格。卖方根据已售出的单位，残值和退货获得报酬。我们分析了两个合同，分别称为零售商和卖方管理的寄售库存（分别为RMCI和VMCI），唯一的区别是在RMCI下，零售商选择服务水平，在VMCI下，卖方指定服务水平。我们为VMCI提出了精确的解决方案，以解决加性不确定性，并将其与乘法案例进行比较。我们证明卖方的最佳退货政策取决于残值，因为如果残值等于零，则卖方不应提供退货政策。我们证明渠道可以从正残值的退货政策中获利。我们证明不确定性的形式和消费者回报的存在在很大程度上影响了问题的解决方案。作为扩展，我们给出在RMCI下获得的结果。