A game theoretic approach to Pricing and Cooperative advertising in a multi-retailer supply chain

Abstract

During the past few decades, there have been tremendous efforts in cooperative advertising. In spite of many practical applications in real life, cooperation in advertising and pricing strategies in a one-manufacturer and multi-retailer supply chain is almost overlooked in the literature. Hence, this paper seeks to investigate optimum co-op advertising and pricing decisions in a B2B relationship for a supply chain consist of a manufacturer and numerous multiple retailers in Iran as a case study. This paper introduces a game theoretic model containing pricing and cooperative advertising in a one-manufacturer and multi-retailer structure. Non-cooperative and cooperative game structures are used for analyzing the proposed model. The non-cooperative game structure uses Stackelberg game among the echelons and Nash game in the retailer echelon. Motivated by a real case study including an Iranian supply chain data of one manufacturer and 150 retailers, a novel model proposed to tackle the similar condition occurred in real life. The results indicate that the manufacturer prefers to suggest higher participation rate to smaller retailers. Sensitivity analysis is presented, and some managerial insights are finally derived from the results.