| This thesis, which consists of four separate essays, employs decentralized newsvendor models to address some critical problems in the context of decentralized retail supply chains.; Essay 1 examines the effectiveness of returns policies in a decentralized newsvendor model, in which a manufacturer sells a product to an independent retailer facing uncertain demand and the retail price is endogenously determined by the retailer. This model will be referred to as the PD-newsvendor model.; Essay 2 investigates the effect of sequential commitment in the decentralized PD-newsvendor model with buybacks. Sequential commitment allows the self-profit maximizing parties to commit to the contract parameters (e.g., wholesale price, retail price, buyback price and order quantity) sequentially and alternately, and we investigate its effect on the equilibrium profits of the channel and its members.; Essay 3 analyzes the effect of price and order postponement in the PD-newsvendor model, possibly with a buyback option. Such postponement strategies can be used by a retailer by delaying his operational decisions (order quantity and retail price) until after demand uncertainty is observed.; Essay 4 considers a supply chain wherein an assembler buys complementary components (or products) from n suppliers, assembles the n components into a final product, and sells it at a fixed retail price over a single selling season. We analyze two contracting systems between the assembler and the suppliers: push and pull. In the push system, the suppliers initiate the process by offering their wholesale prices to the assembler, and the assembler then orders from the suppliers well in advance of the selling season. In the pull system, the assembler first sets the wholesale prices for the different suppliers, and then the suppliers decide how much to produce and bear all of the inventory risk. In both systems, suppliers can form alliances among themselves or act independently. |
