Supply disruption risk causes multiple challenges to retailers'supply chain management.On the one hand,retailers need to adjust their procurement,inventory,and other operational strategies in light of the risk of future supply disruptions;on the other hand,the risk of supply disruptions caused by factors such as natural disasters and epidemics usually triggers consumers'panic stockpiling behavior,resulting in large demand fluctuations in a short time and further complicates retailers'situations.In particular,under supply disruption risk,consumers are usually not sure whether the future supply of goods will be normal or not,and some consumers who are worried about future supply shortages will choose to stockpile a large number of goods.During the COVID-19 pandemic,uncertain supply has led to frequent panic stockpiling among consumers.For example,in the spring of 2020,affected by the COVID-19 pandemic,citizens hoarded a large number of daily necessities such as grain and oil,resulting in serious shortages of daily necessities in many supermarkets.In the situation of intensive panic buying,if retailers or government do not take any intervention,substantial stock-outs may induce more panic buying and increase consumer anxiety about supply shortage,and make panic buying and stock-outs worse.In practice,retailers often can take several different tactics to deal with consumers'panic buying behavior under supply disruption risk,such as keeping safety inventory in advance,increasing prices,or implementing a fixed quota policy upon observing consumers'intensive panic buying.However,in the existing research on retailers'supply disruption risk management,few studies have explored the optimal response strategy of retailers when consumers are panic stockpiling under supply disruption risk.Our paper fills the gap and analyzes retailers'price increases and quota strategies for managing consumers'panic stockpiling behavior under supply disruption risk.The research model considers a monopoly retailer that sells a staple product to a mass of consumers over two periods.Supply disruption may occur at the beginning of period 2,which may cause the retailer's stock-out.Consumers may stockpile products in period 1 for worrying about the shortage in period 2.We focus on the following three research questions:1)How does consumer panic buying behavior affect the retailer's profit and total social welfare?2)Under what circumstances should the retailer implement a price-increase strategy or a fixed quota strategy?3)How will the price-increase strategy and fixed quota strategy affect the total social welfare?First,based on the characterization of consumers'panic-buying decisions,we analyze how consumers'panic stockpiling affects the retailer's optimal profit and total social welfare.The results show that when the panic intensity among consumers is lower than a certain level under which panic stockpiling will not lead to the retailer's stock-out,consumers'stockpiling behavior can increase the retailer's profit and the total social welfare.This is because a certain level of stockpiling can ensure that more products are sold to the consumers to satisfy their needs and avoid loss caused by shortage when disruption occurs,these benefits both the retailer and total social welfare.However,when consumers'panic intensity is higher than a certain level resulting in the retailer's stock-out,panic buying will damage the retailer's profit and the total social welfare.When panic stockpiling leads to stock-out,some consumers could not get the products they needed while some consumers have inventory at home,this results in the loss of consumers and hurts the retailer's profit and overall social welfare.Second,we analyze how the price-increase strategy and fixed quota strategy impact the retailer's optimal profit and correspondingly,when the retailer should increase the price or implement a fixed quota policy.The results show that when the panic intensity is at a middle level,the retailer should not raise the price.However,when the panic intensity is low or high,appropriately raising prices can increase the retailer's profit.Compared with the profit under no response strategy,the implementation of a fixed quota policy can avoid serious stock-out when the intensity of consumer panic is very high and thus protect the retailer's profit.However,the retailer should not impose purchase restrictions when consumer panic intensity falls below a certain threshold.When the retailer should take action to intervene consumers'panic buying behavior,there exists a threshold of consumers'panic intensity under which the retailer should adopt a price-increase policy to adjust consumers'stockpiling demand.However,when the panic intensity is higher than the threshold,the retailer should implement a fixed quota policy to control consumers'panic stockpiling.Finally,we examine how the price-increase and fixed quota strategies affect the aggregate social welfare.The results show that when the panic intensity is very high,adopting the fixed quota policy will bring the highest social welfare.Under certain parameter settings,the fixed quota policy can increase the total social welfare by about 15％compared that under no intervention.This finding verifies the rationality and effectiveness of the quota policy on controlling consumers'intensive panic buying during the COVID-19 pandemic.Another interesting finding is that the price increase strategy can increase the retailer's incentive to prepare inventory for the second period,which may increase the total social welfare under supply disruption risk.
万方数据
维普
