Robust Pricing Of Dual-Channel Supply Chain From The Perspective Of Incomplete Demand Information

With the rapid development of the Internet and e-commerce,more and more manufacturers have opened online sales channel.The combination of online sales channel and offline physical stores has created a new business sales model,namely dual-channel supply chain.The introduction of online channel may divert part of demand for offline physical store.In order to attract more consumers,the two channels will inevitably reduce the sales price.However,blind price reduction will directly damage the manufacturer’s profit.Therefore,the pricing problem of dual-channel supply chain plays a key role in the normal operation of dual-channel supply chain.As an important entity in the supply chain,manufacturers should not only maximize their own profits or minimize costs,but also bear the responsibility of protecting the environment under the guidance of the national green and low-carbon policies,reduce carbon emissions during manufacturing,and contribute to the national low-carbon economy.As a core member of the supply chain,manufacturers often face difficulties in funding their production operations,which makes the pricing issue of dual-channel supply chain more complex.In addition,market demand is an important factor affecting the pricing of dual-channel supply chain.Incomplete demand information will lead to non-optimal pricing of dual-channel supply chain members.Thus,directly affecting the profitability of dual-channel supply chain members.With the turbulence of market environment,the rapid upgrading of products leads to the real demand information difficult to obtain.This poses great challenges to the optimal pricing of dual-channel supply chain members.This thesis aims to study the pricing problem of dual-channel supply chain with incomplete demand information under the condition of green,low-carbon,and capital-constrained for manufacturers,which can provide a reference for decision makers to make pricing decisions in dual-channel supply chain.The contents and innovative points of this thesis mainly include the following aspects:(1)Under the condition that the distribution information of uncertain demand is partially known in the pricing problem of dual-channel supply chain,a new method for characterizing uncertain demand-level interval type-2 fuzzy variable is proposed.The numerical characteristics of common parametric level interval type-2 fuzzy variables are derived.Based on level interval type-2 fuzzy variable,an uncertainty distribution set is constructed to characterize the imprecise distribution of uncertain market demand,which provides theoretical support for the study of pricing in dual-channel supply chain.(2)Based on the manufacturer-led Stackelberg game modeling framework,a distributionally robust dual-channel green supply chain pricing model is established;In order to obtain the robust equilibrium solution of the distributinonally robust pricing model,an analytically tractable method is proposed.In order to verify the effectiveness of the developed model,corresponding numerical experiments were conducted;Numerical results show that when the market demand is uncertain,it is not always beneficial for manufacturer to open a direct channel.(3)The pricing and financing decision of dual-channel supply chain is studied when the upstream manufacturer is capital constrained.Three financing strategies,including trade credit financing,bank loan financing and mixed financing(combination of bank loan financing and equity financing)are considered.Combining robust optimization with bi-level optimization,a distributionally robust bi-level optimization modeling framework is proposed for the pricing problem of dual-channel supply chain with capital constraints under uncertain demand.Uncertain market demand is characterized by parametric level interval type-2 fuzzy variables.The variable distribution of uncertain demand varies over a bounded interval.Numerical analysis discusses the effects of equity financing ratio and uncertain perturbation parameters on the manufacturer’s equilibrium financing strategy.The results show that the equilibrium financing strategy is either trade credit financing or mixed financing,while bank loan financing will never be an equilibrium financing strategy.The change of uncertainty parameter value will affect the manufacturer’s financing strategy choice.(4)The pricing problem of dual-channel supply chain is studied when the upstream manufacturer is subject to carbon emission regulation and the exact distribution of uncertain demand cannot be obtained.In order to encourage the manufacturer to reduce carbon emission,two cap-and-trade regulation mechanisms,grandfathering mechanism and benchmarking mechanism,are considered.In order to characterize the distribution of uncertain demand,a bi-parametric uncertainty distribution set is proposed based on type-2 fuzzy theory.On the basis of the proposed uncertainty distribution set,a distributionally robust bi-level dual-channel supply chain pricing model is established.Numerical analysis shows that the demand uncertainty can affect the manufacturer’s choice of carbon emission regulation mechanisms.Specifically,when the uncertainty of uncertain demand is low,the benchmarking mechanism is advantageous to the manufacturer compared to the grandfathering mechanism.When the demand uncertainty degree is high,the manufacturer prefers grandfathering mechanism rather than benchmarking mechanism.