Research On The Decisions On The Optimal MOQ Of Supply Chain From The Perspectiveof Marketing

Economic globalization brings the opportunities to international and domestic enterprises, and also increases their risk and pressure of competition at the same time. Facing with fierce competition in the market and different requirements of customers for products and services, enterprises have to keep shortening product life cycles in order to survive, which demands higher requirements about the product research and development (R&D) level, as well as the input level. Corresponding with this, when the product R&D level and the input ratio increase, inevitably it requires enterprises to realize the economic value by economies of scale during the process of R&D. It also means that enterprises should have large production scale and market size to share and compensate the cost of product R&D, and further to reduce the unit cost of product and enhance the product value and profit space.In view of this, for this class of products such as drug, fashion, packaged goods, because of their short life cycles, high investment, and long lead time, it is easy to cause a great of loss when the situation such as shortage or excess inventory occurs. Supplier usually adopts the mode of batch production or purchasing to realize economies of scale, and further to reduce the cost of product and control market risks. So, supplier would propose requirements about their downstream retailers’ordering size, for example the MOQ pattern.MOQ is one of the mainstream strategies that supplier requires retailers to adopt. And it is the minimum size (number) that retailers should order each time or within each contract period. Retailers can choose not to order if they think MOQ is economical.In the existing research, MOQ generally is regarded as an exogenous variable from the perspective of production and inventory management optimization. Differently, under the assumption that capacity is unconstraint and with the goal of profit maximization, this paper starts from the background of various supply chain relationships and regards MOQ as an endogenous to make the optimal MOQ decision from the perspective of marketing. It is theoretically proved that the strategy which realizes the scale economy of supplier is feasible. We also study the strategy’s influence on the overall profit of the whole supply chain or and each member’s profit, and provide the research direction and basis for the further optimization of the decentralized supply chain. Based on the supplier-Stackelberg structure and price-dependent demand, this paper mainly makes theoretical research on the two-echelon decentralized supply chain. And the special contents and innovations of this paper are as follows:1) MOQ decision of supply chain is decided based on independent retailers which have three different styles, such as a monopoly retailer, two independent retailers and several independent retailers. According to these situations, three optimum MOQs of supply chain are determined, respectively. Then, we analyze the influence of optimum MOQs to each member and even the whole performance of supply chain.2) MOQ decision of supply chain is determined related to competition of retailers. Considering of competitive relationship between two retailers, we construct two dimensional zero-sum game models with complete information including vertical Stackelberg game in which supplier is dominant, and three types of horizontal game which are Cournot, Collusion and Stackelberg games between the two retailers. Based on these three game models, optimal MOQ of supply chain can be inferred, respectively. By comparing and analyzing dominant strategy and inferior strategy of these three models, it can provide assistance to select an appropriate game model for the supplier.3) The optimal decision of MOQ is obtained according to asymmetric demand information. Suppose the retailer possesses accurate demand information, yet the supplier only knows of probability distribution of demand. Based on this assumption, optimal MOQ of supplier can be deduced. Then, we analyze the influence of this optimal MOQ to each member and even the whole performance of supply chain. The conclusion of it can be applied in marketing supply chain of cloud storage. In this application, we suppose price sensitive factor subject to normal distribution and further determine optimum and minimum storage capacity sold by cloud storage supplier. Finally, rationality and availability of proposed method are demonstrated.4) The influence on inventory decisions of capacity variability of supply chain is analyzed. The optimal decision of MOQ mentioned above has an assumption that the capacity is infinite. Therefore, it is necessary to analyze the influence of capacity variability on decisions making of supply chain. In order to deal with this problem, in the background of two-echelon supply chain of periodic production and review with discrete time and infinite plan period we analyze the influence of capacity variability in making inventory decision in two situations of decentralization and centralization. Furthermore, inventory subsidy contract is designed to acheive perfect coordination and reduce the storage cost.In this paper, we investigate MOQ from the perspective of marketing and take it as decision variable to optimize supply chain, which can enrich and develop supply chain optimization theory and method.Meanwhile, the proposed method can provide theoretical guidance for Supply Chain Optimization which take supplier as dominance in practice.