The Role of 3PL in Budget-Constrained Supply Chain

The paper examines the impact of the role of 3PL on the performance of a two-level supply chain with a supplier and a budget-constrained retailer. We define two alternative roles of 3PL in a budget-constrained supply chain: Convention and Delegation. In convention model, the 3PL offers a traditional role of logistics providers, while in delegation model the 3PL presents the role of both logistics and financing providers by allying the bank. We show that under a symmetric information, there is no difference for the payoffs of individual firm and the entire supply chain in both convention and Delegation settings, and the competitive financial market can decouple retailer's operational and financial decisions. However, in an asymmetric information setting, the payoff of individual firm in delegation model is better off than that in conventional model.