Supply chain analysis of cross border importing e-commerce considering with bonded warehouse and direct mailing

Abstract

In this paper, we consider a cross-border supply chain system that has an import e-commerce company and an overseas supplier. We first considered a pure bonded warehouse mode in which the e-commerce company makes bulk purchase from an overseas supplier to a bonded warehouse and will deliver goods to customers from the bonded warehouse when customers order online. We constructed a Stackelberg model to obtain the equilibrium solution by using backward induction, and then properties of equilibrium strategy and equilibrium profit is discussed. We then studied the combined bonded warehouse and direct mailing mode in which the e-commerce company will purchase a single piece and mail to the customer directly if the bonded warehouse is out of stock. Analytical results demonstrate that the combined bonded warehouse and direct mailing mode may increase the profit of suppliers and decrease the profit of e-commerce companies.