ANALYSIS ON RETAILERS COLLABORATION IN SUPPLY NETWORKS

Abstract

In Singapore, the average waiting time for customers to get their car orders is as long as two to three months, which often leads to lost sales. In this project, we consider alternative distribution systems to provide insight for car dealers to improve their performance. Three systems are discussed: the current decentralized system, the collaboration system, and the centralized system. Considering the feasibility of our proposals, we focus on analysis of the collaboration system and show that it leads to higher revenue under certain assumptions. We provide computational results for the above three systems and verify the efficiency of the collaboration and the centralized systems. Parameters such as the product market search and the estimation parameter are used for further analysis. Techniques in graph theory are applied to study the relationship among the retailers and the collaboration effects on them. We also explain how to use properties of a bipartite graph to gain better understanding on the retailer-customer relationship.