Equilibrium Models in Supply Chains

This dissertation, "Equilibrium Models in Supply Chains" by Jiukun, Li, 李久坤, was obtained from The University of Hong Kong (Pokfulam, Hong Kong) and is being sold pursuant to Creative Commons: Attribution 3.0 Hong Kong License. The content of this dissertation has not been altered in any way. We have altered the formatting in order to facilitate the ease of printing and reading of the dissertation. All rights not granted by the above license are retained by the author. Abstract: Abstract of thesis entitled Equilibrium Models in Supply Chains Submitted by LI JIUKUN for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy at The University of Hong Kong in January 2007. Business to Consumer (B2C) e-commerce is expected to have an impact on customer behavior and transport systems. In an attempt to establish a model to study the impact, this study adopted a theoretical approach and developed three stochastic network equilibrium models from the perspective of customer behavior intention, in order to investigate the interactions among supply chain performance, customer expectation, customer satisfaction, customer value, and customer behavior intention for B2C e-commerce, and the impacts of B2C e-commerce on transportation in supply chain systems. The concept of perceived utility was applied to define the attractiveness of a supply chain in a supply chain system. A satisfaction function was employed to define an adjusted utility function. The utility of customer value and utility of customer satisfaction were defined. A nested logit model was applied to the choice of supply chains. A multinomial logit model was used to model the choice of routes. Variational inequalities were applied to formulate the network equilibriums. The solution iialgorithms, implemented in MATLAB, were applied to solve these network equilibrium models. The models and their solution algorithms were illustrated by several numerical examples. Customer expectation was measured in terms of an integrated level of product quality and level of supply chain performance expected by customers. The influences of customer expectations on product demand, distribution of customer flow in supply chains and the adoption of B2C e-commerce were demonstrated by the model. The impact of the level of experience of customers on customer behavior intention, and the impact of customer value and customer satisfaction on the adoption rate of B2C e- commerce were evaluated by the model. Two delivery methods (delivery by e- retailers and delivery by manufacturers) were considered in this study. The impact of B2C e-commerce on transportation, the impact of traffic environment on adoption rate of B2C e-commerce and the effects of various delivery methods on the traffic were evaluated. Policy and managerial implications were considered for assessing the impact of customer expectation, customer value, customer satisfaction and traffic environment on the adoption of B2C e-commerce, and the impact of B2C e-commerce on transportation. iii DOI: 10.5353/th_b3852358 Subjects: Electronic commerce Consumer behavior Consumer satisfaction Delivery of goods - Mathematical models Business logistics