Title: Mobile service supply chain coordination with revenue sharing contracts

Authors: Yaobin Lu, Jiabao Lin, Bin Wang

Addresses: School of Management, Huazhong University of Science and Technology, Wuhan 430074, PR China. ' School of Management, Huazhong University of Science and Technology, Wuhan 430074, PR China. ' College of Business Administration, University of Texas-Pan American, Edinburg, TX 78539, USA

Abstract: The mobile service supply chain has unique characteristics that differentiate it from the traditional supply chain. For example, there is no tangible inventory and the sales revenue is directly collected from the customers by the Mobile Network Operator (MNO). This research studies the coordination mechanism of the mobile service supply chain and establishes and analyses a model of revenue-sharing contract. We show that, under certain conditions, the revenue-sharing contract can maximise the expected profit and coordinate the mobile service supply chain. We also illustrate the results using a numerical example.

Keywords: mobile services; SCM; supply chain management; supply chain coordination; revenue sharing; contracts; inventories; sales revenue; mobile network operators; profit maximisation; mobile phones; cell phones; China; customers; logistics systems; logistics management; m-services.

DOI: 10.1504/IJLSM.2010.031981

International Journal of Logistics Systems and Management, 2010 Vol.6 No.3, pp.267 - 278

Published online: 03 Mar 2010 *

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