Price competition, cost and demand disruptions and coordination of a supply chain with one manufacturer and two competing retailers

This paper studies the coordination of a supply chain with one manufacturer and two competing retailers after the production cost of the manufacturer was disrupted. We consider two coordination mechanisms: an all-unit quantity discount and an incremental quantity discount. For each mechanism, we develop the conditions under which the supply chain is coordinated and discuss how the cost disruption may affect the coordination mechanisms. For the all-unit quantity discount scheme, we find that the manufacturer charges the lower-cost retailer for a lower unit wholesale price in order to induce him to order more products. If the costs of two retailers have a remarkable difference, then the all-unit quantity discount scheme cannot coordinate the supply chain with disruptions. While the cost disruption may affect the wholesale prices, order quantities as well as retail prices, it is optimal for the supply chain to keep the original coordination mechanism if the production cost change is sufficiently small. The model is also extended to the case with both cost and demand disruptions. The equilibrium strategies of the retailers are investigated when the manufacturer cannot timely react to the disruptions such that she has to keep the original mechanism. We illustrate the results by numerical examples. (C) 2006 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.