Supporting a capital-constrained supplier with mixed pre-shipment financing facilities

This study considers a tandem supply chain (S.C.) in which a credit-worthy retailer cooperates with a capital-constrained supplier to manufacture products. The retailer can use two major pre-shipment financing options, either cash in advance (CIA) or pricing support purchase order financing (PSPOF), to fund the supplier’s operations. A model is developed to examine the interactions among the entities. The retailer can choose the prepayment modality, purchase price and order quantity. The supplier decides on the production input and loan amount. A Karush-Kuhn-Tucker optimality analysis is used to characterise the properties of the retailer’s ordering and financing strategy: (1) The supplier might embezzle the CIA if the purchasing and financing contract is not well-designed; therefore, the retailer should establish some restrictions on the order price and CIA amount. (2) The retailer’s optimal decision about the quantity to purchase is independent of the financing strategy. (3) Because these schemes are interchangeable, multiple optimal financing portfolios consisting of CIA and/or PSPOF are possible. (4) The optimal dual-financing scheme maximises the retailer’s profit and integrates the S.C. Thus, the scheme can eliminate the effect of double-marginalisation. (5) As the supplier becomes more reliable, the retailer should increase the usage of PSPOF and purchasing quantity.