Managing Economies of Scale in a Supply Chain - Short-term discounting: Trade Promotions

11 important questions on Managing Economies of Scale in a Supply Chain - Short-term discounting: Trade Promotions

What are trade promotions?

they are used to offer a discounted price for a set time period to retailers

Give 3 reasons for suppliers to use trade promotions

  1. Induce retailers to use price discounts, displays and advertising to spur sales
  2. shift inventory from the manufacturer to the retailer and customer
  3. Defend a brand against competition

What is a forward buy?

A forward buy occurs when a retailer purchases in the promotional period for sales in future periods.
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What is the result of trade promotions?

they lead to significant increase in lot size and cycle inventory because of forward buying by the retailer. Which results in reduced supply chain profits unless the trade promotion reduces demand fluctuations.

What is the optimal thing to do with the short-term discount for the retailers?

pass through only a small fraction of the discount to the customer, keeping the rest for themselves. Further retailers increase the purchase lot size and forward buy. The problem thus for manufacturers is that there is almost no increase in demand because retailers keep the discount for themselves.

What is the difference between lot-size based and volume based discounts?

lot-size based if the pricing schedule offers discounts based on the quantity ordered in a single lot.
Volume based if the discount is based upon the total quantity purchased in a single period, regardless of the amount of lots purchased.

Give 2 lot-size based discount schemes

  1. All unit quantity discounts
  2. Marginal unit quantity discount or multi-block tariffs

Give 2 reasons for for a supplier to offer quantity discounts

  1. Improved coordination to increase total supply chain profits; means that the decisions both retailer and supplier make maximize total supply chain profits.
  2. Extraction of surplus by supplier through price discrimination

How can lot-size based quantity discounts be used for commodity products?

The price for these products is set by the market, manufacturers with large fixed costs per lot can use lot-size quantity discounts to maximize total supply chain profits. These do however increase cycle inventory in the supply chain.

Give 2 pricing schemes that a manufacturer may use to achieve the coordinated solution and maximize supply chain profits

  1. Two-part tariff; manufacturer charges its entire profit up-front as an franchise fee, then sells against at cost.
  2. Volume-based quantity discount

What is optimal for the whole supply chain for products for which a firm has market power?

Then lot-size based discounts do not work, but you can use either two-part tariff or volume-based discount.

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