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Motivated by the wide application of procurement strategies in retailing, this paper aims to examine the effect of procurement strategies on decisions and profits and strategic inventory (SI) is considered.

The game-theoretic models are developed under a two-period fresh product supply chain (FSC), and consist of the mode of purchasing products only in the first period without SI (Scenario S), the mode of purchasing products in every period without SI (Scenario T) and the mode of purchasing products in every period with SI (Scenario TS).

Conducting the calculating and comparing, some major findings can be concluded. In general, two-period purchasing strategies (Scenarios T and TS) promote a higher freshness-keeping effort than the single buying strategy (Scenario S). Regarding the pricing strategy, SI and Scenario S can both contribute to obtaining a lower wholesale price, the retailer's pricing is relatively complicated and hinges on the consumer's sensitivity to freshness-keeping effort and the holding cost. Besides, comparing the sales quantity and the profit, the authors find that Scenario TS stimulates more demands and brings more profits for the manufacturer. However, Scenario TS is not the optimal selection for the reason that SI sometimes hurts the retailer and even the whole supply chain. Whereas, when the holding cost is in a certain range, Scenario TS will lead to a win-win situation.

The main findings of this study can give the enterprises some advice on the procurement strategies of fresh products and the decisions of pricing and the freshness-keeping effort.

Due to rapid product obsolescence, there is a significant decline in the market prices, which causes that the sale season is often divided into two periods. This paper aims to consider a class of two-period supply contracts that offer the retailer the ordering flexibility in response to the market changes. This paper analyzes the two-period ordering and coordination problem with option contracts.

The authors incorporate call, put and bidirectional option contracts into the two-period ordering model. By applying stochastic dynamic programming, the authors derive the retailer’s optimal ordering policies for two periods. By benchmarking the case without option contracts, they highlight the advantage of option contracts. Through the mutual comparisons, the authors also explore the impacts of different option contracts. On this basis, the authors explore the conditions on which two-period supply contracts containing options can coordinate the supply chain.

This study shows that the retailer is always better off with option contracts. In addition, the effectiveness of different option contracts depends on the option contract parameters. When the parameters are the same for different option contracts, bidirectional option contracts are superior to call and put ones; otherwise, bidirectional option contracts might be superior or inferior to call and put ones. If designed properly, two-period supply contracts containing options can coordinate the two-period supply chain.

This paper is the first to highlight the value of option contracts as well as explore the role of different option contracts on the two-period procurement problem. The insights derived from our analysis can provide a good way on how to help the retailer work more efficiently in a two-period setting.

Most firms in the fashion industry frequently design and promote new products, which leads to a two-period phenomenon in product sales. This study aims to examine the optimal advertising efforts of each channel member and the subsidy strategies of the manufacturer with retail competition in a two-period supply chain.

By utilizing the game theory, this study developed a cooperative advertising model that considers the element of retailer competition in a two-period supply chain.

The main results of this study are as follows. An increase in the subsidy rate of one retailer’s advertising cost will lead to a decrease in the share of the other. When a manufacturer’s marginal profit from one retailer is considerably larger than that from the other, the manufacturer will share more advertising cost with the former. This study demonstrates that a bilateral participation contract can achieve supply chain coordination and increases the likelihood of retailers to participate in this contract when competition effect is small.

First, product price is not a decision variable in this model. This concern can be studied in future work. Second, the one-manufacturer and two-retailer supply chain can be expanded to competitive manufacturers.

This study provides some decision references for the manufacturer and retailer on advertising strategies. The manufacturer can also gain insights into cooperative advertising strategy when facing a competitive retail environment.

Most previous studies related to cooperative advertising focused on a single-period supply chain. This study investigates cooperative advertising strategy with retail competition in two-period sales and explores the potential coordinating power of a bilateral participation contract.

This paper aims to investigate the effect of hunger marketing strategy on supply chain pricing and coordinate the supply chain through a two-period pricing model.

According to a two-period pricing model with hunger marketing strategy, the authors investigate two different scenarios: the centralized system and the decentralized system. The optimal or equilibrium solutions are calculated and compared in two different scenarios.

First, the hunger marketing strategy can improve the total profit of the supply chain by increasing the retail price and the total sales volume. Second, the hunger marketing strategy aggravates the double marginalization effect. Third, the authors introduce the revenue-sharing contract and characterize the conditions under which the revenue-sharing contract can coordinate the supply chain and be accepted by both the members.

First, the authors suppose the same retail price in two periods for mathematic simplicity; second, they do not consider the discount factor for the revenue during the two periods.

This paper provides a guide to policymakers in terms of product pricing and supply rate.

First, the authors suppose the same retail price in two periods for mathematic simplicity; second, they do not consider the discount factor for the revenue during the two periods.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the opaque inventory information disclosure strategy for an online retailer who sells two substitutable products to customers in two selling periods.

The authors develop a two-period model where an online retailer sells two substitute products with two inventory composition structures to maximize profits. The authors investigate the optimal inventory disclosure decision from both ex post and ex ante perspectives. Sensitivity analysis is performed to investigate the effects that discount rate, transaction cost and the probability of agreeable inventory situation have on the equilibrium disclosure outcome. The authors also consider risk-averse customers and horizontally differentiated products to highlight the robustness of our results.

The authors find that the online retailer will choose the opaque information disclosure when attempting to increase revenue and reduce the mismatch of supply and demand in both ex post and ex ante inventory information conditions. Comparing with ex post disclosure strategies, ex ante opaque disclosure is optimal in a larger price region, and the total revenues gap between opaque disclosure and complete disclosure gradually increase as discount rate, transaction cost or the probability of agreeable inventory situation decreases. Furthermore, strategic customers may tend to be risk neutral when faced with opaque inventory information in a two-period sales setting.

This current paper is the first paper to study the online retailer's inventory information disclosure strategy in two selling periods. Moreover, this paper presents the conditions under which the online retailer should share complete or opaque inventory information with customers to maximize the online retailer's total revenues.

The purpose of this paper is to utilize a newly constructed index for social justice, with its two versions SJI-1 and SJI-2, to measure new values for the indexes in 35 countries in two periods, 2005-2010 and 2011-2015, in an attempt to assess quantitatively how less developed countries developed through time in terms of social justice.

The paper obtained data for 35 developing countries in the six subindicators used to quantify the six dimensions of the social justice index. The values of the subindicators were then normalized and aggregated to form SJI-1 and SJI-2, each of which assigns different weights for its subindicators, for the 35 countries in the two periods 2005-2010 and 2011-2015.

Results of the new values of the index in its two versions were close in showing how 31 countries (according to SJI-1) and 29 countries (according to SJI-2) managed to improve their levels of social justice, while the indexes of only three countries (according to SJI-1) and six countries (according to SJI-2) worsened. Nevertheless, the index depicted that some countries performed better than others by improving their ranks at the expense of others. Comparison of the study’s quantitative results with qualitative research seems to provide some support for SJI-2 in echoing social justice compared to SJI-1.

The study is a vital tool for policymakers for appraising the levels of social justice in their respective countries, both in absolute terms by highlighting the scores of their countries with respect to social justice, and in relative terms by clarifying where their countries stand through cross-country comparisons, in addition to identifying dimensions of social justice which are in need of intervention for further enhancement.

Explores tax structures in a two‐period, two‐good model, allowing for endogenous labour supplies. The model includes the specification of a joint distribution of wage rates facing individuals in the two periods. It also specifies a joint distribution of the various preference parameters used, allowing for the calibration such that the average proportion of expenditure on each good varies with (endogenous) income. This introduces distributional grounds for the use of a selective consumption tax, alongside an income tax, when maximizing a social welfare function displaying inequality aversion.

The authors address a two-dimensional (both customer acquisition and retention) incentive in a decentralized service chain consisting of a risk-neutral brand and agent (or averse). 

The authors focus on the relationship between acquisition and retention, that is, retained customers (repeated purchases) are based on and come from the acquired (new) customers in the former period. The authors also design a two-period separate incentive on both dimensions.

The authors found that a targeted incentive strategy should be applied for achieving more revenue when the incentive intensities are relatively small. Otherwise, the brand needs to adjust the targeted incentive strategy into incentivizing the opposite dimension, particularly on acquisition. Under the optimal contract, the brand needs to be very careful with deciding the fixed part of the incentive salary and the incentive intensities on both dimensions. For example, the fixed salary initially decreases and then increases in the incentive intensities. For the optimal incentive policies, the brand should incentivize acquisition but outsource retention if the agent is risk-neutral. When the agent is becoming risk-averse, the brand should lower its incentive intensity as the risk degree and variances become larger. Interestingly, the brand may benefit from introducing risks.

The study contributes to the literature by considering the following points. First, the authors extend the principal-agent incentive model by considering two-period decisions of customer acquisition and retention. Second, based on the two-period principal-agent problem, the authors design separate incentive intensities on acquisition and retention, respectively. While, most of the literature focused on acquisition incentives. Third, different from other works focusing on either risk-neutral or risk-averse environments, the authors consider both and compare the cases of risk-neutral and risk-averse to analyze the impact of risk on the optimal decisions and the brand's expected profit.