Research On Operation Decision Of Supply Chain Under Uncertain Demand

With the development of Internet technology and online business platforms,multichannel sales of products have become the main sales method of the company.However,the multi-channel layout has affected the operational efficiency of supply chain participants,especially traditional retailers,resulting in the “channel conflicts” and other problems.At the same time,fierce market competition is forcing manufacturers to pay increased attention to the product upgrade strategies to gain more market share.The product differentiation management and quality improvement strategies are common strategies used by manufacturers in supply chain management.However,previous studies have focused on a single strategy of quality improvement or product differentiation under demand determination,ignoring the joint impact of quality improvement and product differentiation on the dual-channel supply chain.Therefore,this paper,starting from the influence of demand determination and demand uncertainty,focuses on the impact of product quality improvement and product differentiation strategies conducted by the manufacturer on the dual-channel supply chain operation decisions.Firstly,this paper considers a study of supply chain operational decisions for quality improvement and heterogeneity management under demand determination.The Stackelberg game model and optimization theory are applied to establish the demand and utility functions before and after the quality improvement and product differentiation strategies respectively,and the models are solved to derive the optimal pricing decisions under different mechanisms.The analysis shows that under demand determination,the manufacturer needs to be more concerned about the impact of quality improvement costs.Secondly,this paper considers a study of supply chain operation decision-making considering quality improvement and heterogeneity under demand uncertainty.The MeanVariance model is applied to establish the demand function and utility function under demand uncertainty respectively,and the Stackelberg game is used to solve the model to derive the optimal pricing decision,and finally analyze the impact of demand uncertainty on the supply chain by arithmetic example.The analysis shows that as the manufacturer improves product quality and offers heterogeneous products to different channels,the retailer needs to be more concerned about the impact of uncertain demand.Lastly,the impact of demand uncertainty on supply chain operations is analyzed.This paper explores the impact of demand uncertainty on supply chain operation decisions under the benchmark and quality improvement models by comparing the optimal supply chain decisions under the demand determination and demand uncertainty models,respectively.This paper integrates multidisciplinary theories and methods from mathematics,decision sciences,and operations research to investigate the impact of manufacturers’ quality improvement and heterogeneity strategies on supply chain operation decisions around demand determination and demand uncertainty scenarios.This paper is both an extension of existing research and a decision reference for manufacturers’ and retailers’ pricing decisions.