Management Science and Engineering Department 's Lecture

Theme：Manufacturing practices and servitization: the role of mass customization and product innovation capabilities

Speaker：Nina Yan (Department of Supply Chain & Operations Management Business School, Central University of Finance and Economics)

Time：2019-05-22 10:00

Address：Room 1008, Mingde Business Building

Language：Chinese/English

Abstract：
With the emergence and rapid development of platform economics, digital platforms are playing an increasingly important role in financing small and medium suppliers and distributing products for them. In this study, the supplier can sell its products online through e-commerce platform or its own online direct channel. Through a game theoretical approach, taking consumers’ channel preference into consideration, this study examines the supplier's optimal supply quantity for each channel and e-commerce platform's optimal interest rate and loan limit in four scenarios based on supplier's financing needs and e-commerce platform's financing offering. We find when the supplier has sufficient capital, her channel strategy—online or offline only, or online or offline dominated dual channel—depends on the channel’s profit margin and consumers’ channel preferences. If the supplier is financially constrained, then her channel strategy depends on EC platform’s loan offering—generous or limited. We find both the generous loan and limited loan can facilitate Pareto improvement for the capital-constrained supplier. The generous loan is the optimal financing scheme for both supplier and EC disregarding the certain amount of capital gap of supplier if consumers prefer offline channel more. However, if the consumers prefer online channel more, only when the supplier’s capital gap is medium, can the supplier and EC platform set a financing agreement, in which whether choosing generous or limited loan depends on the referral rate and loan amount. This study proves the value-added effect of e-commerce's financing service and provides guidelines for supplier's distribution channel strategies.

Short biography：
Nina YAN is currently working as a Professor in Business School, Central University of Finance and Economics, Beijing, China. Prof. Yan received her BSc, MSc and PhD in Management Science from Northeastern University in 2002, 2004 and 2007, respectively. She engaged in postdoctoral research in Renmin University from 2007 to 2009. Dr. Yan's current research interest includes supply chain finance, supply chain operations, game theory etc. She published over 20 papers in reputational international journals, including OMEGA, EJOR, IJPE, IJPR, etc. She is the Principal Investigator for several National and Provincial level projects, including the Research Plan of the National Natural Science Foundation of China.