Multi-manufacturer single-retailer supply chain model under price- and warranty period-dependent demand

In reality, many manufacturers produce different brands of the same item to sell through a common retailer. This paper deals with such a supply chain scenario in which the demand at the downstream player (retailer) is dependent on price as well as the length of the warranty period offered by the upstream player (manufacturer). A game-theoretic framework is applied to obtain the equilibrium solution for each entity. Our analysis reveals that the non-cooperative game leads to lower channel profit whereas, the retailer-Stackelberg and manufacturer-Stackelberg games can lead to higher channel profit. A numerical example is taken to compare the outcome of the supply chain model under different scenarios and to examine the impact of model-parameters on optimal solutions.

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