Allocating Inventory Risk in Retail Supply Chains: Risk Aversion, Information Asymmetry, and Outside Opportunity

Problem definition: Recent global crises have caused unprecedented economic uncertainty and intensified retailers’ concerns over inventory risks. Mitigating inventory risks and incentivizing retailer orders is critical to managing retail supply chains and restoring their norms after severe impacts. We study the allocation of inventory risk using contracts in a retail supply chain with a risk-neutral manufacturer and a risk-averse retailer. We consider two factors that affect the effectiveness of contracting: (1) asymmetric risk aversion information—retailers’ attitudes are typically diverse and unknown to the manufacturer, and (2) uncertain outside opportunity—retailers typically face a volatile external business environment. Methodology/results: With a game-theoretic model that captures the interaction among risk aversion, information asymmetry, and outside opportunity, we derive the contracting equilibrium under two widely adopted risk allocation schemes—push (i.e., the retailer bears the inventory risk) and pull (i.e., the manufacturer bears the inventory risk) contracts. Contrary to the conventional wisdom that pull contracts are more effective in risk mitigation, we show that push contracts may induce larger expected order quantities and achieve the highest supply chain efficiency due to the interaction of asymmetric risk aversion information and risky outside opportunities. We also find that the manufacturer may obtain higher profits with push contracts when both the heterogeneity in the retailer’s risk attitude and the risk of the outside opportunity are sufficiently high. In addition, when the risk of the outside opportunity is in a medium range, the push contract allows the manufacturer to fully eliminate the information rent and achieve the supply chain’s first-best outcomes. We further evaluate the effects of product profitability and demand uncertainty and generalize the retailer’s risk measure to any coherent risk measure. Managerial implications: Our analysis highlights the importance of modeling asymmetric risk aversion information and risky outside opportunities in analyzing supply chain contracting. When considering these practical factors, allocating more inventory risks to a risk-averse retailer may be better than a risk-neutral manufacturer. Our results provide novel insights into the selection of proper contract types for managing inventory risks in retail supply chains.

Supplemental Material: The online appendix is available at https://doi.org/10.1287/msom.2022.0624 .