Retailer’s Operational Decision Based on EOQ Model with Upstream Flexible Two-Part Trade Credit and Downstream Partial Trade Credit

Abstract

Flexible two-part trade credit is widely used in supply chain, however, there is scant research about inventory management engaged in flexible two-part trade credit strategy. This paper bridges this gap and studies a new two-level trade credit based on an EOQ model in which the supplier provides flexible two-part trade credit to the retailer and the retailer provides partial trade credit to its customer. We adopt a convex optimization method to obtain retailer’s optimal operational decision (i.e., the optimal ordering cycle, the optimal fraction of purchase cost that paid in advance, and the optimal credit period for its downstream customer). Moreover, we design a numerical algorithm to solve this model computationally. We find that: (1) the retailer is not sensitive to small cash discount provided by the supplier; (2) the length of credit period in flexible two-part trade credit strategy will affect the customer and retailer: the shorter one influences the retailer’s behavior, but not the customer’s; the longer one influences the customer’s behavior, but not the retailer’s; (3) the retailer can control its risk through partial trade credit.