Fuzzy Demand Newsboy Problem Stackelberg Equilibrium Strategy

Newsboy model has been used in many industries and areas in view of its important theoretical significance and application value, and many scholars have also carried out a great deal of research on the classical newsboy problem and its extension models. Most of the researches on newsboy problem in the category of supply chain were developed for centralized supply chain. However, the current supply chain structure has gradually changed from a centralized control for the distributed control. Therefore, the use of bilevel decision model to describe supply-purchase system is more realistic.By using the credibility theory of fuzzy set, this paper investigated the optimal decisions for manufacturer and wholesaler in the bilevel decision system under fuzzy demand, namely, the Stackelberg equilibrium strategy. Taking the manufacturer as the first perspective, it explored the making of optimal quantity discounts. The main focuses and innovations of this paper are summarized as follows:1. It chose a better theory as tool. Through the research on single-node newsboy model with fuzzy demand, it contrastively analyzed the advantages and disadvantages between possibility and credibility theory of fuzzy set, and finally chose credibility theory as a research tool of this paper, which laid a theoretical foundation for the later research;2. It took the discount intervals for piecewise quantity discounts as decision variable rather than established parameters. This study object is different from the main focus of previously traditional researches about piecewise quantity discounts;3. In the category of distributed supply chain, it proved that the piecewise quantity discounts could achieve perfect coordination for the system, which was significantly different from the main conclusions of previous researches in the category of centralized supply chain (that is, the only use of piecewise quantity discounts can not achieve perfect coordination for the system);4. A new form of quantity discounts named negative exponential quantity discounts was designed. Its greatest feature is that the initial discount points were taken as decision variable rather than established parameters, which can provide decision-makers with more decision-making information;5. The study filled the gaps in the research field of bilevel system for newsboy problem with fuzzy demand (such as research about capital-constrained multi-product, about substitutable products, etc.). It took the designed negative exponential quantity discounts as examples, and showed that this form of discounts could achieve perfect coordination for the distributed supply chain system.