Optimal Decision of Deferred Payment Supply Chain considering Bilateral Risk-Aversion Degree

This paper aims to fill up the gap that the previous research has never explored, the deferred payment supply chain with a risk-averse supplier. To this end, the conditional value-at-risk (CVaR) was adopted as a criterion to measure the influence of retailer’s deferred payment on supply chain performance. According to this criterion, the retailer’s optimal order quantity and the supplier’s optimal wholesale price per unit product were investigated under decentralized decision-making. Then, the existence of a unique optimal strategy was discussed for risk-averse supplier and retailer, and the values of risk-averse, initial capital, and wholesale price were calculated in detail. Finally, the theoretical results were testified through a numerical example. It is concluded that retailer’s optimal order quantity is negatively correlated with the wholesale price, initial capital, and degree of risk aversion, so that the retailer can benefit through proper risk aversion; the supplier’s expected profit decreases with the increase in the degree of risk aversion, yet the optimal wholesale price is determined by the degree of risk aversion of supplier and retailer. The research findings shed valuable new light on how to manage a supply chain involving risk-averse supplier and retailer.