The effect of customer satisfaction on design and profitability of supply chains

众所周知，如果单个企业作为供应链而不是独立的实体进行竞争，它们就有更大的成功机会。由于供应链的成败掌握在客户手中，因此供应链的最终目标是满足客户的需求。本研究计划旨在调查顾客满意度对供应链盈利能力的影响。收入直接受到客户数量和销售量的影响。增加收入可以通过采用有效的忠诚度计划和设计响应式供应链来满足客户。忠诚度计划是一种结构化的营销手段，旨在通过奖励顾客的重复购买行为来提高他们的忠诚度。另一方面，响应性被定义为“供应链对需求变化快速响应的能力，包括产品的数量和组合”。本研究主要包括以下两个部分。***组件1：在该组件中，我们研究了不同忠诚度计划对由多站点零售商组成的供应链的盈利能力的有效性，该供应链对应于多级生产-分销网络。如果我们只关注金钱激励形式的忠诚计划，而不关注顾客体验，顾客的不满可能会危及连锁店的长期盈利能力。在本研究中，供应链的响应性将与忠诚度计划相结合，以实现最大的盈利能力。为了使供应链反应更灵敏，我们可能需要决定零售商在靠近客户区域的数量和位置。因此，该组件的主要重点是在战略层面确定要建立的零售商的位置，并在战术层面构建供应链的忠诚度计划。***组件2：在此组件中，我们开发了一个模拟模型以及数学模型，以调查不同忠诚度计划的有效性，这些计划与竞争对手在自己的供应链和自己的忠诚度计划中的行为有关。本文提出的数学模型是动态随机博弈。由于有太多的忠诚政策可以被所有竞争对手公司审查，而这些政策的影响和市场中竞争对手之间的相互作用是不确定的，所以模拟模型在这里更合适。这些模型可以用来研究单个策略的有效性，并确定每个策略的最优积分和奖励。然后，建立了一个博弈论模型，以确定基于这些生成的策略的链的最佳策略。在接下来的步骤中，仿真研究将生成许多其他离散策略，并将此过程持续下去，直到达到供应链的最佳忠诚奖励策略

It is well recognized that individual businesses have greater chance of success if they compete as supply chains rather than stand-alone entities. Since the success or failure of a supply chain is in the hands of customers, the ultimate goal of the chain is to meet the needs of its customers. This research proposal aims at investigating the effects of customer satisfaction on the profitability of supply chains. Revenue is directly affected by the number of customers and sales volume. Increased revenue can be achieved by satisfying customers through adopting effective loyalty programs and also designing responsive supply chains. Loyalty programs are structured marketing efforts that aim to enhance customers' loyalty by rewarding their repeat purchase behaviour. Responsiveness, on the other hand, is defined as “the ability of a supply chain to respond rapidly to the changes in demand, both in terms of volume and mix of products.” This research involves two main components as follows.***Component 1: In this component, we investigate the effectiveness of different loyalty programs on the profitability of a supply chain that consists of multi-site retailers and corresponds to a multi-echelon production-distribution network. If we only focus on loyalty programs in the form of monetary incentive and without paying attention to customer experience, dissatisfaction of customers may jeopardize the chain's long-term profitability. In this research, supply chain's responsiveness will be integrated with loyalty programs to achieve the maximum profitability. In order to make a supply chain more responsive, we may need to decide the number and locations of the retailers in areas close to customers. Therefore, the main focus of this component is on determining the locations of retailers to be built at the strategic level and structuring the supply chain's loyalty program at the tactical level.***Component 2: In this component, we develop a simulation model in as well as the mathematical model to investigate the effectiveness of different loyalty programs with respect to the behaviour of competitors within their own supply chains and their own loyalty programs. The proposed mathematical model in this component will be dynamic stochastic game. As there are so many loyalty policies which can be examined by all rival firms, and the effects of those policies and the interactions among the rivals in the market are not known with certainty, simulation models will be more appropriate here. These models can be used to investigate the effectiveness of individual policies and to determine the optimal points and rewards in each policy. Then, a game-theoretical model is developed to determine the chain's best strategy based on those generated policies. In the next step, many other discrete policies will be generated by the simulation study and the process will continue until the best loyalty reward policy for the supply chain is reached.**