Buyer Intermediation in Supplier Finance
研究了大型买方在供应商融资中充当中间人的作用，通过博弈模型和一家中国大型电商的数据分析，发现买方中介能降低利率和批发价、提高订单满足率，使渠道利润提升13.05%，供应商和零售商利润各增超10%。
Small suppliers often face challenges to obtain financing for their operations. Especially in developing economies, traditional financing methods can be very costly or unavailable to such suppliers. To reduce channel costs, large buyers have recently begun implementing their own financing methods that intermediate between suppliers and financing institutions. In this paper, we analyze the role and efficiency of buyer intermediation in supplier financing. Building a game-theoretical model, we show that buyer intermediated financing can significantly improve channel performance, and can simultaneously benefit both supply chain participants. Using data from a large Chinese online retailer and through structural regression estimation, we demonstrate that buyer intermediation lowers interest rates and wholesale prices, increases order fill rates, and boosts supplier borrowing. Based on counterfactual analysis on the data, we predict that the implementation of buyer intermediated financing will improve channel profits by 13.05%, increasing supplier and retailer profits by more than 10% each, and yielding approximately $44 million projected savings for the retailer. The online supplement is available at https://doi.org/10.1287/mnsc.2017.2863 . This paper was accepted by Vishal Gaur, operations management.