This thesis investigates two issues in operations management. The first one is the impact of counterfeits and strategies of fighting counterfeits for brand name companies, which includes two parts, and the second one is the effect of timing of payments in a joint replenishment and pricing control problem....[ Read more ]

This thesis investigates two issues in operations management. The first one is the impact of counterfeits and strategies of fighting counterfeits for brand name companies, which includes two parts, and the second one is the effect of timing of payments in a joint replenishment and pricing control problem.

Counterfeiting is a widely spread phenomenon and has seen rapid growth in recent years. All counterfeits can be divided into two categories, non-deceptive and deceptive, depending on whether consumers can recognize them when making a purchase. In the first part, we focus on how non-deceptive counterfeits affect the price, market share and profitability of brand name products. We also consider the strategies for brand name companies to fight non-deceptive counterfeits, compare different fighting strategies in a market with one brand name product and its counterfeit, and derive equilibrium fighting strategies in a market with two competing brand name products and a counterfeit under general conditions.

In the second part, we focus on how deceptive counterfeits affect a brand name manufacturer’s profit and supply chain structure. In a market with deceptive counterfeits, the brand name manufacturer should consider protective strategies on its supply chain to avoid being penetrated by counterfeits. We analyze a brand name manufacturer’s optimal decision on whether to establish a reliable distribution channel, decentralized or centralized, to guarantee 100% authenticity, and whether to sell through the general channel having been penetrated by counterfeits. We also compare the profit from a centralized reliable channel to the one from a decentralized one.

In the third part, we consider the joint replenishment and pricing control problem in a periodic review system in which consumers pay upon receiving their goods and unmet demand is lost if not filled in the following period, referred to as conditional backlogging. We show that a base-stock list price policy is optimal in the case without a fixed ordering cost, and provide a sufficient condition for an (s_t, S_t, p_t) policy to be optimal in the case with a positive fixed ordering cost. We also compare this system to the one where customers pay upon arrival analytically and numerically.