Achieving efficiency in capacity procurement
File(s)
Author(s)
Shao, Lusheng
Anderson, Edward
Chen, Bo
Type
Journal Article
Abstract
This chapter studies a capacity procurement problem in which a buyer meets an uncertain demand using a combination of spot purchases and supply options that are offered by a number of competing suppliers. The specific setting we consider involves the suppliers each owning a block of capacity and the buyer restricted to reserving the entire block or none. For this setting, we are interested in understanding the buyer’s optimal procurement strategy and the suppliers’ competitive bidding behavior in the supply option market. To this end, we first examine the buyer’s optimal decision given a set of supply options, and then study the suppliers’ optimal bidding strategies in equilibrium. We find that it is optimal for suppliers to set execution price at cost and hence make a profit only through the reservation payment. We also prove that when all the blocks have the same size the buyer’s optimal profit as a function of supplier set is submodular. This property allows us to characterize an equilibrium in which the supply chain optimum is achieved, each supplier makes a profit equal to their marginal contribution to the supply chain and the buyer takes the remaining profit. When the blocks have different sizes, we develop a recursive procedure to characterize a class of equilibria in which the supply chain efficiency is achieved.
Date Issued
2020-10-01
Date Acceptance
2020-10-01
Citation
Foundations and Trends® in Technology, Information and Operations Management, 2020, 14 (1–2), pp.138-154
ISSN
1571-9545
Publisher
Now Publishers
Start Page
138
End Page
154
Journal / Book Title
Foundations and Trends® in Technology, Information and Operations Management
Volume
14
Issue
1–2
Copyright Statement
© 2020 Lusheng Shao, Edward Anderson and Bo Chen
Subjects
0806 Information Systems
1503 Business and Management
1505 Marketing
Publication Status
Published
Date Publish Online
2020-10-01