Motivated by the prevalence of Consumer-to-Manufacturer (C2M) programs in retail platforms, this study considers a Vendor Managed Inventory (VMI) supply chain system, consisting of a retail platform and a manufacturer, which designs and sells a new product to a market of customers. Particularly, the manufacturer’s design of the product’s attributes would affect the conversion rate of the customers who click the web links to the product, and customer demand for the product eventually. The manufacturer jointly plans the product design and inventory control in this model. By exploring the model, we demonstrate that the manufacturer makes inventory decisions following a modified base-stock policy dependent on the conversion rate, and adjusts the product design as the inventory cost rate increases. Furthermore, we find the manufacturer’s separate plan of product design and inventory control harms the manufacturer but can benefit the retail platform and the entire supply chain. This finding can explain why the manufacturer’s separate plan is a widely observed phenomenon in practical C2M programs. We further propose a hybrid contracting scheme, which combines quantity discount and cost sharing contracts, to coordinate the supply chain system. Two-fold extensions of the main model, heterogeneous customer valuation and dynamic product design, have also been considered.

中文翻译：

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在 C2M 供应链中联合优化产品设计和制造库存


受零售平台中消费者对制造商 （C2M） 计划的普遍性推动，本研究考虑了供应商管理库存 （VMI） 供应链系统，该系统由零售平台和制造商组成，该系统设计并向客户市场销售新产品。特别是，制造商对产品属性的设计会影响点击产品网络链接的客户的转化率，并最终影响客户对产品的需求。制造商在此模式下共同规划产品设计和库存控制。通过探索该模型，我们证明了制造商根据转化率按照修改后的基础库存政策做出库存决策，并随着库存成本率的增加而调整产品设计。此外，我们发现制造商的单独产品设计和库存控制计划对制造商有害，但可以使零售平台和整个供应链受益。这一发现可以解释为什么制造商的单独计划在实际 C2M 程序中是一个广泛观察到的现象。我们进一步提出了一种混合合同计划，该计划结合了数量折扣和成本分摊合同，以协调供应链系统。主模型的双重扩展，即异构客户估值和动态产品设计，也被考虑在内。