Search results

The confirmation of receipt of orders by consumers means that the online retailer actually receives the payments on many retail platforms (e.g. Taobao). In order to recoup funds as soon as possible, the retailer will take steps (e.g. improving the level of delivery and adopting a rebate policy) to encourage consumers to confirm receipt earlier. It is significant for the retailer to identify an appropriate strategy and determine the optimal product price. To address the above issues, this paper examines and compares the pricing strategies and profits under different strategies to show some managerial insights for the retailer's decision-making.

In this paper, the authors discuss four models, i.e. adopting common delivery and offering consumers no rebates, adopting common delivery and offering rebates, adopting fast delivery and offering no rebates and adopting fast delivery and offering rebates, which the retailer may consider. Under different models, consumer utility and firm's profit structure are disparate. After comparing the retailer's profits under four models, the optimal strategy, profit and product price are obtained.

Some interesting results are as follows. When the cost of fast delivery is not very high, improving the level of delivery would bring more profit to the retailer and create a positive impact on consumers. Interestingly, our results also show that offering proper rebates to stimulate consumers to confirm receipt early only serves to improve the profit only when the motivation of consumers to confirm the receipt is very low. Moreover, the authors find that a higher level of delivery services can promote the implementation of the rebate policy to improve the retailer's earnings.

This paper is the first study on the transaction mode of retail platforms and the problem of confirming receipt by a model-based method.

Labor markets for unskilled and low-wage workers in the United States stagnated in the last quarter of the 20th century. The collapse in the low-wage labor market has been well documented¹ and numerous research initiatives have investigated the causes. Despite some geographical mismatches between buyers and sellers low-paying jobs are generally available but forces are at work on both the demand and supply sides of unskilled labor markets that make it increasingly difficult for working families at or near the bottom of the income distribution to earn enough to meet basic needs. Welfare reform effectively increased the supply of unskilled workers, which placed added pressures on wages and earnings of low-income families.

Motivated by the real-world practice that the boom of the online selling induces a higher product return as well, selecting which online channel mode indicates who takes ownership over the product and thus bears the loss of the product return. This paper aims to seek the optimal online channel modes for the two members in a platform supply chain in the presence of product returns.

This study aims to develop a platform supply chain that consists of one platform company and one supplier. Along with an offline distribution channel, the supplier can choose two alternative online selling modes (i.e. the reselling and agency modes) to sell its product through the online marketplace. This paper applies Stackelberg game to derive the equilibrium with different business scenarios and selects the optimal online channel modes for two parties, respectively. Moreover, this paper extends to a different supply chain with a reverse channel leadership and a different product return policy for testing the robustness.

Several interesting and important results are derived in this paper. Firstly, it is found that the relative pricing are largely relied on the costs of two channels. Secondly, the platform supply chain may benefit from a pure channel rather than the dual-channel when this channel enjoys a relatively low cost and/or a sufficiently high consumer preference. Then, the platform and the supplier act contradictorily when selecting their optimal online channel modes. To be specific, the platform motivates to choose the online reselling mode when both the commission rate and the slotting fee are relatively low, whereas the supplier is likely to select the online agency mode under this circumstance. Finally, a win-win situation in regards to the optimal online channel mode for two parties is achievable with numerical experiments.

Based on the analytical studies, the results derived in the authors’ work can provide managerial insights to assist the supplier and the platform company in determining the operational decision and selecting the optimal online channel mode to deal with consumer returns. In addition, appropriate commission rate along with slotting fee will make both parties achieve a win-win situation in determining their optimal online channel mode.

To the authors’ best knowledge, this paper makes the first move to determine the optimal online channel mode in the content of consumer returns and study how it is affected by different product return policies.

In this paper, the authors design accelerated life test and provide its application in the field of accelerated life test. The authors use maximum likelihood estimation method as a parameter estimation method.

In this paper we design accelerated life test and provide its application in the field of accelerated life test. The authors use maximum likelihood estimation method as a parameter estimation method.

In this study, the authors design accelerated life test under Type-I censoring when the lifetime of test items follows PID and also provides its application in the field of warranty policy. The following conclusion is made on the basis of this study. (1) An inverse relationship is shown between the shape parameter with the expected total cost and expected cycle time, while the shape parameter directly relates to the expected cost rate (see Table 5). (2) A direct relationship is shown between the scale parameter with the expected total cost and expected time cycle, while the inverse relationship is shown with the expected cost rate (see Table 5). (3) An inverse relationship is shown between the replacement age and the expected cost rate, while there are direct relationships between expected total cost and expected time cycle (see Table 5).

This paper is neither published or neither accepted anywhere.

The purpose of this paper is to review and develop stochastic models for the evaluation of the expected warranty cost, from dealer's viewpoint, for second hand items sold under different warranty policies.

This study makes a useful contribution to the warranty literature by developing a framework to study one dimensional warranty policies for second‐hand products from dealer's viewpoint. Also, numerical examples are provided to illustrate the application of these models.

Despite the fact that warranties for second‐hand products are commonly used, the accurate pricing of warranties in many situations remains an unsolved problem, for both the dealer and customer. The proposed framework allows the dealer to analyze the cost of alternative warranty policies before deciding on the policy to be offered with the sale of a second‐hand item.

The policies and models developed in this paper can be useful in managerial decisions making related to second‐hand products such as automobiles, home appliances, helicopters, electronic equipment and electronics.

In a decentralized supply chain with one supplier and one retailer, a properly designed contract can lead to supply chain coordination. In this chapter, we model the selection of an appropriate coordinating contract from a menu of contracts including wholesale price, buyback, and markdown money, while allowing both the supplier and the retailer to assume the roles of Stackelberg leader and/or supply chain captain. This work extends previous literature that assumes that the supplier is both the Stackelberg leader and the supply chain captain. In our models, either agent can make stocking and pricing decisions. Our findings suggest that the feasibility of a coordinating contract depends on the addition of Pareto-improving, profit-sharing conditions that motivate agents to take part in the contract. Further, the selection of an optimal contract is based not only on which agent holds the overstock liquidation advantage, but also on the decision structure of the supply chain. For instance, when the supplier is the Stackelberg leader and the retailer is the supply chain captain, as well as holds the inventory liquidation advantage, and controls the stocking level, then a wholesale price contract can coordinate the supply chain under the proposed Pareto-improving profit sharing, termed Pareto-improving coordination. Additional results and managerial implications are presented in the chapter.

Purpose – This chapter tests the effectiveness of different institutions to fundraise for environmental projects at tourism destinations.

Methodology – We conduct a series of experiments with tourists visiting the Island of Majorca, Spain, and test the fundraising capacity of a voluntary donation scheme, two tax levels, and a matching instrument. In the first treatment of our experiment, tourists have the opportunity to make a voluntary donation to a local environmental organization involved in environmental projects. In a high-tax and low-tax treatment, tourists are taxed some proportion of their initial endowment and then are allowed to make voluntary contributions from their remaining endowment. In a final treatment, the experimenters match, one-for-one, any voluntary donations.

Findings – We test the crowding-out hypothesis of taxes over voluntary environmental donations and find imperfect crowding-out (from 60% to 65% for different tax levels).We also explore potential crowding-in of matching instruments (widely used in nontourism settings for fundraising campaigns), but do not find any support for it.

Practical Implications – Our results support the conclusion that it would be reasonable to use voluntary donation programs and tourism taxes complementarily (instead of independently), to increase fundraising for environmental purposes at tourism destinations.

Various types of warranty programs are offered for consumer products. The two most common are a linear pro-rata warranty or a lump-sum warranty, if product failure occurs prior to the specified warranty time. In this chapter we consider additional types of warranty programs that allow the consumer to purchase a one-time extended warranty in the event of no failure within the initial warranty period. For the extended period, warranty may be linearly pro-rated, starting at an amount that is lower than the initial purchase price. Alternatively, for the extended period, warranty may be a lump-sum amount, that is less than the initial warranty amount. Expressions for the expected costs under each of the programs are derived. Guidelines are provided for determining the parameters of each warranty program under relevant constraints. Sensitivity analysis is also conducted to determine the effect of the problem parameters on the expected warranty costs.

The purpose of this paper is to quantify the implications of China's recently adopted agricultural policies on domestic and international commodity markets.

A systematic, quantitative analysis is applied to address whether China's recent trade and production policies distort China's domestic and international commodity markets. The paper provides a clear picture of how trade‐restricting policies affect markets using a 42‐country partial equilibrium global dynamic agricultural simulation model.

The paper shows that recent agricultural policy reforms increase China's production slightly, causing imports to decrease while exports decline because of input subsidies, export taxes and the reduction of export value added tax rebates. Domestic prices to consumers decrease in real terms. The effects on world markets are small as the set of policies adopted partially offset each other in the international arena.

The paper indicates that the adoption of the policy reforms lower price levels domestically and benefit lower income urban and rural households, whose diets are largely based on rice and wheat as staple foods. Future model enhancements should include measures of producer and consumer welfare in order to capture the total impacts of policies and policy changes in China.

The paper quantifies the potential implications of the recent agricultural policy reforms in China. This contributes to the investigation of the effects of these policies implemented by the Chinese Government to achieve the country's policy objectives. Owing to the dynamics of China's policy implementation an in‐depth analysis sheds light and contributes to capturing the impacts of policy reforms on the domestic and international markets.