In this paper we study the competitive order timing decisions of two manufacturers with demand forecasting updating and uncertain raw material price. Manufacturers can order the raw materials early when the market is highly uncertain with a fixed wholesale price (Contract procurement) or late when the market is less uncertain with an uncertain raw material price (Spot trading). Different from most existing literature, we assume the spot price and the market demand is correlated. We find that in the monopoly setting the manufacturer prefers the contract procurement to the spot trading when the unit wholesale price for the contract procurement is not greater than the expected unit spot price of the raw material. In the duopoly setting, we characterize the equilibria of a strategic order timing game in which manufacturers choose when to buy the raw materials. We find that when the demand during the contract procurement stage and the spot price uncertainty is small both manufacturers prefer the contract procurement strategy and when the demand during the contract procurement stage and the spot price uncertainty is large both manufacturers prefer the spot trading. When the demand during the contract procurement stage and the spot price uncertainty is high and purchase costs do not decline too severely over time, the unique equilibrium of this game is that one manufacturer chooses contract procurement to order early and the other chooses spot trading to order late. Further, we find that the correlation of spot purchasing price and the market demand signal during the contract procurement stage will weaken the advantages of spot trading strategy. When the spot purchasing price and the market demand signal during the contract procurement stage are not correlated, manufacturers prefer spot trading under the highly volatile spot trading price, fluctuating demand, and high information precision.

The fairness concern behavior is particularly common among members in supply chain framework. The downstream retailers often compare their profits with those of the other members in the supply chain, especially that of the supplier, and do not like the unfavorable distribution of the total profits. This work considers a supply chain consisting of a supplier and two competing retailers with fairness concerns. The supplier offers a wholesale contract with quantity discount, and the two competing retailers have the options of individual purchasing and group buying. Through a Stackelberg game model, the optimal decisions for the players are obtained for the group buying and the individual purchasing strategies. The results indicate that the supplier benefits more than the retailers from the group buying strategy. In particular, the group buying strategy gives the supplier a higher profit if the operational cost of group buying is below a threshold. Furthermore, the fairness concern behavior of the retailers does not always hurt the profit of the supplier. Specifically, the supplier will benefit from the fairness concern behavior of the retailers in individual purchasing when the retailers operates in a relatively poor environment. Finally, market competition between the two fairness concerned retailers does not always benefit the supplier. Fierce competition between the fairness concerned retailers reduces the supplier’s profit if the group buying strategy is used when the retailers operates in a relatively poor environment.

Evolinguistics is an attempt to clarify the origins and evolution of language and communication, thereby deepening our understanding of humans from an evolutionary perspective. The origins of language is characterized by the biological evolution of abilities related to language and communication, and the evolution of language by the structuralization and complexification of language knowledge as well as communication systems through cultural evolution. In Evolinguistics, two idiosyncrasies of human linguistic communication are the primary focus, namely, using hierarchically organized symbol sequences in language and sharing intentions in communication. We believe that the integration of these two characteristics made humans co-creative and smart, and in particular gave us knowledge co-creation capacity. The emergent constructive approach plays an important role in this research, which is a methodology to analyze complex systems by constructing and operating the evolutionary and emergent process of complex phenomena. Two studies taking this approach are introduced in this paper. One is a language evolution experiment in a laboratory to consider the process, mechanisms, and neural basis of symbolic communication systems. The other is an evolutionary simulation of recursive combination, which is thought of as the essential ability to form hierarchical structures. A hypothesis integrating intention sharing and recursive combination is discussed as an abductive reasoning mechanism for understanding others intentions.

In the age of artificial intelligence, firms’ internal data are increasingly valuable when merged with each other for inter-firm analysis and predictions. However, the inter-firm data transactions represent a novel challenge on pricing due to the complex nature of data, such as quality information asymmetry, lack of pricing standards, and the negligible marginal cost. This paper conducts a case study at Shanghai Data Exchange to explore the factors that can facilitate the data transactions between buyers and providers. We use interview transcripts from 18 participating firms to construct our three theoretical dimensions: increasing the perceived value, mitigating the cost, and improving the market design. We then browse through 18 factors to assess their value for further improvements. The managerial implications are also discussed.

This paper considers a humanitarian logistics network (HTLN) design problem, including the emergency relief facilities (ERFs) location-allocation decision for the efficient distribution of emergency supplies from the ERFs to the affected areas. A goal programming (GP) approach is applied to consider the multiple objectives simultaneously. Solving the GP model with a given weight assigned to each goal yields a single HTLN scheme, so there will be various schemes available by solving the GP with multiple values of the weights. For evaluating these schemes and identifying the most efficient one, we apply the data envelopment analysis (DEA) methods considering each scheme as a decision-making unit (DMU). Since the classical DEA (C-DEA) intrinsically aims to identify efficient DMUs and the efficient frontier, the use of C-DEA may not lead to a full ranking in many situations. There are several independent evaluation approaches to increasing discriminating power. Among them, this study integrates the multiple criteria DEA (MC-DEA) with the following three DEA methods, (i) stratification DEA (S-DEA), (ii) cross-efficiency DEA (CE-DEA), and (iii) super-efficiency DEA (SE-DEA), to make the most use of each method’s strengths. Through a case study of designing the HTLN system for South Carolina, the procedure of implementing the integrated multiple criteria DEA (IMC-DEA) method is demonstrated. It is observed that the IMC-DEA method performs well in terms of designing the HTLN system and would help the decision-makers consider more efficient options and make a final decision.

This paper studies the impact of logistics cooperation in two competing companies, one of which is equipped with a self-run logistics system while the other is not. The latter outsources logistics services to a third-party logistics company before logistics cooperation, or to its competitor after logistics cooperation with the client’s service quality being in proportion to and no greater than the service provider’s service quality. We find that when the service provider is a price taker, logistics cooperation is beneficial to both firms only when the service quality after logistics cooperation is moderate. Interestingly, under some circumstances, the client’s profit increases even when its service quality decreases after logistics cooperation because logistics cooperation eases the price competition. We also find that all-win situations in which logistics cooperation increases the firms’ profit, consumer surplus and social welfare can be achieved. Finally, when the service price can be chosen by the service provider, we propose a negotiation process in which agreement on logistics cooperation can be reached; when the firm can invest in service quality, logistics cooperation may lower the equilibrium investment level.