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

众所周知，如果个别企业作为供应链而不是独立实体进行竞争，那么它们成功的机会就会更大。由于供应链的成败掌握在客户手中，供应链的最终目标是满足客户的需求。本研究旨在探讨顾客满意度对供应链盈利性的影响。营收直接受到客户数量和销量的影响。通过采用有效的忠诚度计划和设计响应性供应链，可以通过满足客户需求来增加收入。忠诚度计划是一种有组织的营销活动，旨在通过奖励客户的重复购买行为来提高客户的忠诚度。另一方面，响应性被定义为“供应链在数量和产品组合方面对需求变化做出快速反应的能力。”本研究包括以下两个主要部分。 第一部分：在这个部分中，我们调查了不同忠诚度计划对由多地点零售商组成的供应链的盈利能力的有效性，该供应链对应于一个多梯级的生产-分销网络。如果只以金钱激励的形式关注忠诚度计划，而不关注客户体验，客户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。为了使供应链更具响应性，我们可能需要决定零售商在靠近客户的地区的数量和地点。因此，这一部分的主要重点是在战略层面确定零售商的位置，在战术层面构建供应链的忠诚度计划。 组件2：在此组件中，我们在中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相对于竞争对手在其自己的供应链中的行为和他们自己的忠诚度计划的有效性。该组件中提出的数学模型将是动态随机博弈。由于有如此多的忠诚度政策可以被所有竞争对手公司检验，而且这些政策的效果和市场上竞争对手之间的相互作用并不确定，因此模拟模型在这里将更合适。这些模型可以用来调查个别政策的有效性，并确定每项政策的最优积分和奖励。然后，建立了一个博弈论模型，根据生成的策略确定供应链的最优策略。在下一步中，模拟研究将产生许多其他离散策略，该过程将继续进行，直到供应链的最优忠诚奖励策略被达成。

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.