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

人们普遍认识到，单个企业如果作为供应链而不是独立的实体进行竞争，成功的机会就更大。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。本研究旨在探讨顾客满意度对供应链获利能力的影响。收入直接受客户数目及销量影响。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需求，可以实现收入的增加。忠诚度计划是结构化的营销工作，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，反应能力被定义为“供应链对需求变化迅速作出反应的能力，无论是在产品数量上还是在产品组合上。本研究主要包括以下两个部分：第一部分：在一个由多个零售商组成的多级生产-分销网络的供应链中，研究不同忠诚度计划对供应链盈利能力的影响。如果只注重金钱激励的忠诚度计划，而不注重顾客体验，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。为了使供应链的响应速度更快，我们可能需要决定零售商的数量和位置在靠近客户的地区。因此，这一部分的主要重点是在战略层面上确定要建立的零售商的位置，并在战术层面上构建供应链的忠诚计划。在该组件中，我们开发了一个模拟模型，以及数学模型，以调查不同的忠诚度计划的有效性方面的行为，竞争对手在自己的供应链和自己的忠诚计划在这一部分中提出的数学模型将是动态随机博弈。由于有这么多的忠诚度政策，可以检查的所有竞争对手的公司，和这些政策的影响和竞争对手之间的相互作用在市场上是不知道的确定性，模拟模型将更适合在这里。这些模型可以用来研究单个策略的有效性，并确定每个策略中的最优积分和奖励。然后，一个博弈理论模型的开发，以确定链的最佳策略的基础上产生的政策。在下一步中，许多其他离散的政策将产生的模拟研究和过程将继续，直到最佳的忠诚奖励政策的供应链。

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.