Tsan-Ming Choi – författare

As a fundamental problem in stochastic inventory control, the newsvendor problem has been studied since the 18th century in the economic literature, and has been widely used to analyze supply chains in fashion and seasonal product industries. Since the 1950s, the newsvendor problem has been extensively studied in operations research and extended to model a variety of real-life problems. The simplest and most elementary version of the newsvendor problem is an optimal stocking problem in which a newsvendor needs to decide how many newspapers to order for future demand, where the future demand is uncertain and follows a stationary distribution. Research in this area has greatly increased over the last few years, and now the Handbook of Newsvendor Problems: Models, Extensions and Applications captures the state of the art.

The handbook consists of two sections -- Models and Extensions, and Applications. Each section includes many interesting works in the respective domain. Section I presents papers on topics like the multi-product newsvendor problems; the newsvendor problem with law invariant coherent measures of risk; a Copula approach to inventory pooling problems with newsvendor products; repeated newsvendor games with transshipments; cooperative newsvendor games; an economic interpretation for the price-setting newsvendor problem; newsvendor models with alternative risk preferences within expected utility theory and prospect theory frameworks; and newsvendor problems with VaR and CVaR consideration. Section II presents papers on such topics as a two-period newsvendor problem for closed-loop supply chain analysis; the remanufacturing newsvendor problem; inventory centralization in a newsvendor setting when shortage costs differ; production planning on an unreliable machine for multiple items; analysis of the newsvendor problem under carbon emissions policies; optimal decisions of the manufacturer and distributor in a fresh product supply chain involving long distance transportation; a newsvendor perspective on profit target setting for multiple divisions; and a portfolio approach to multi-product newsvendor problem with budget constraint.

This well-balanced handbook presents a wealth of theoretical results from different perspectives. With contributions from many of the leading researchers in the field, the Handbook of Newsvendor Problems: Models, Extensions and Applications is a timely addition to the literature and consolidates all the new and exciting works related to the newsvendor problem into one high quality source.

Risk analysis is crucial in stochastic supply chain models. Over the past few years, the pace has quickened for research attempting to explore risk analysis issues in supply chain management problems, while the majority of recent papers focus on conceptual framework or computational numerical analysis.  Pioneered by Nobel laureate Markowitz in the 1950s, the mean-risk (MR) formulation became a fundamental theory for risk management in finance. Despite the significance and popularity of MR-related approaches in finance, their applications in studying multi-echelon supply chain management problems have only been seriously explored in recent years.

While the MR approach has already been shown to be useful in conducting risk analysis in stochastic supply chain models, there is no comprehensive reference source that provides the state-of-the-art findings on this important model for supply chain management. Thus it is significant to have a book that reviews and extends the MR related works for supply chain risk analysis. 

This book is organized into five chapters. Chapter 1 introduces the topic, offers a timely review of various related areas, and explains why the MR approach is important for conducting supply chain risk analysis. Chapter 2 examines the single period inventory model with the mean-variance and mean-semi-deviation approaches. Extensive discussions on the efficient frontiers are also reported. Chapter 3 explores the infinite horizon multi-period inventory model with a mean-variance approach. Chapter 4 investigates the supply chain coordination problem with a versatile target sales rebate contractand a risk averse retailer possessing the mean-variance optimization objective. Chapter 5 concludes the book and discusses various promising future research directions and extensions. Every chapter can be taken as a self-contained article, and the notation within each chapter is consistently employed.

The Economic Order Quantity (EOQ) inventory model first appeared in 1913, and in its centennial, it is still one of the most important inventory models.  Despite the abundance of both classical and new research results, there was (until now) no comprehensive reference source that provides the state-of-the-art findings on both theoretical and applied research on the EOQ and its related models. This edited handbook puts together all these interesting works and the respective insights into an edited volume.

The handbook contains papers which explore both the deterministic and the stochastic EOQ-model based problems and applications. It is organized into three parts: Part I presents three papers that provide an introduction and review of various EOQ related models. Part II includes four technical analyses on single-echelon EOQ-model based inventory problems. Part III consists of five papers on applications of the EOQ model for multi-echelon supply chain inventory analysis.

Fashion Branding and Consumer Behaviors presents eye-opening theory, literature review and original research on the mutual influence of branding strategies and consumer response. Contributors use multiple methods to analyze consumers'' psychosocial needs and the extent that their fulfillment goes beyond the usefulness or value of the items they purchase as well as the fashion industry''s means of communicating brand identity and enhancing brand loyalty. Along the way, these studies raise important questions about consumer behaviors, consumer welfare, environmental ethics and the future of consumer research. Included in the coverage:

A breakthrough volume on the complexities of how and why we buy, Fashion Branding and Consumer Behaviors will captivate researchers and practitioners in the fields of consumer psychology, marketing and economics.

This handbook is a compilation of comprehensive reference sources that provide state-of-the-art findings on both theoretical and applied research on sustainable fashion supply chain management. It contains three parts, organized under the headings of “Reviews and Discussions,” “Analytical Research,” and “Empirical Research,” featuring peer-reviewed papers contributed by researchers from Asia, Europe, and the US. This book is the first to focus on sustainable supply chain management in the fashion industry and is therefore a pioneering text on this topic.

In the fashion industry, disposable fashion under the fast fashion concept has become a trend. In this trend, fashion supply chains must be highly responsive to market changes and able to produce fashion products in very small quantities to satisfy changing consumer needs. As a result, new styles will appear in the market within a very short time and fashion brands such as Zara can reduce the whole process cycle from conceptual design to a final ready-to-sell “well-produced and packaged” product on the retail sales floor within a few weeks. From the supply chain’s perspective, the fast fashion concept helps to match supply and demand and lowers inventory. Moreover, since many fast fashion companies, e.g., Zara, H&M, and Topshop, adopt a local sourcing approach and obtain supply from local manufacturers (to cut lead time), the corresponding carbon footprint is much reduced. Thus, this local sourcing scheme under fast fashion would enhance the level of environmental friendliness compared with the more traditional offshore sourcing. Furthermore, since the fashion supply chain is notorious for generating high volumes of pollutants, involving hazardous materials in the production processes, and producing products by companies with low social responsibility, new management principles and theories, especially those that take into account consumer behaviours and preferences, need to bedeveloped to address many of these issues in order to achieve the goal of sustainable fashion supply chain management.

The topics covered include Reverse Logistics of US Carpet Recycling; Green Brand Strategies in the Fashion Industry; Impacts of Social Media on Consumers’ Disposals of Apparel; Fashion Supply Chain Network Competition with Eco-labelling; Reverse Logistics as a Sustainable Supply Chain Practice for the Fashion Industry; Apparel Manufacturers’ Path to World-class Corporate Social Responsibility; Sustainable Supply Chain Management in the Slow-Fashion Industry; Mass Market Second-hand Clothing Retail Operations in Hong Kong; Constraints and Drivers of Growth in the Ethical Fashion Sector: The case of France; and Effects of Used Garment Collection Programmes in Fast Fashion Brands.