Channel coordination under consignment and vendor-managed inventory in a distribution system

This paper deals with the problem of coordinating a vertically separated distribution system under vendor-managed inventory and consignment arrangements. We formulate the profit-maximization problem and carry out equilibrium analysis under cooperative and non-cooperative settings. In addition, a revenue-sharing scheme joint with a side-payment is proposed, which leads to Pareto improvements among channel participants. Our analysis reveals that the non-cooperative decentralization tends to price higher and stock less, which leads to a lower channel-wide profit. The consistent bias can be rectified by the dominant, cooperative wholesaler or by using the proposed two-part revenue-sharing mechanism.