Research on Financial Hedging Decision Based on Exchange Rate Risk in Transnational Supply Chain

This paper considers a three-echelon manufacturer-retailer-supplier supply chain, the purpose of which is to investigate the influence of the bilateral exchange rate risks of import and export and the leading company’s financial hedging on the decision-makers of the supply chain. Firstly, it constructs the profit function and the financial hedging decision-making model of each member in the decentralized supply chain. Secondly, it introduces the incentive mechanism of exchange rate risk hedging in the centralized supply chain. Thirdly, from the perspective of wholesale price agreements and revenue-sharing contracts, it discusses the impact of financial hedging behavior and bilateral exchange rate risks on the decision-making process of each member through mathematical modeling. Finally, it explores the relationships of decision variables through simulation analysis. The results illustrate that (i) for decentralized and centralized decision-making, the manufacturer’s expected profit and profit variance decrease with the increase of the fluctuations of import and export exchange rates under the hedging strategy for exchange rate risks; (ii) compared with the decentralized supply chain, the manufacturer’s expected profit in the centralized supply chain decreases slightly under the revenue-sharing contract; (iii) in the centralized supply chain, if the manufacturer’s risk hedging ratio is high, its profit variance is smaller than that of the decentralized supply chain and the expected profits of the retailer and the supplier will increase significantly; and (iv) for the members of the transnational supply chain, centralized decision-making is better than decentralized decision-making.

Green Technology Investment in a Decentralized Supply Chain under Demand Uncertainty

Green technology investment is an important factor that influences the sustainability and performance of the supply chain. In this paper, we use the game-theoretic approach, which is quite suitable to operation decision research, to model a supply chain consisting of one supplier and one retailer and discuss who should invest in green technology in a decentralized supply chain under demand uncertainty. An important result we found is that the retailer has a stronger investment motivation and higher investment efficiency compared to the supplier. The retailer also tends to invest in green technology himself when customers are not so sensitive to the product’s retail price. We analyze the supply chain sustainability, and find that high levels of green technology investments are not always necessarily good for environmental sustainability, it depends on the environmental impact’s sensitivity to green technology. Lastly, a joint investment mechanism is designed to induce the retailer to join in the green technology investment when he has no investment intention, and that realizes a Pareto improvement of the supply chain. Based on the results, we recommend designing more incentive mechanisms to induce the retailers to join in the green technology investment according to supply chain conditions.

Digital, Decentralized Supply Chain and Its Implication for B2B Marketing

This chapter discusses the possible effects of decentralized, digital supply chains on B2B marketing. Traditional buying and selling functions will change once large organizations decide to procure from digital platforms. Using the case study of medikabazaar.com, an Indian start-up, the chapter shows that while medical supply purchase will become decentralized, digital platforms will create a new centralization of suppliers and have a significant impact on industrial buying particularly for high value medical equipment purchase in small towns or small hospitals. Organizational buying process will be impacted and companies that choose to supply products directly to hospitals will have to change their marketing strategy suitably.