Retailers often sell their own store brands that compete with the national brands. Store brand competition induces the supplier to quote lower wholesale prices for national brands. In multi-period selling environments, retailers may complement this wholesale price reduction by carrying strategic inventories. Hence, store brand carrying retailers face the following dilemma. On the one hand, strong store brand competition might be sufficient to lower the national brand's wholesale price substantially. In this case, the retailer need not carry any strategic inventory. On the other hand, the wholesale price reduction induced solely by store brand competition might not be substantial. In this case, the retailer might want to carry either national brand or store brand strategic inventory to complement the wholesale price reduction. We address the above dilemma by investigating the effect of store brand competition on the strategic inventory decision using a two-period game-theoretic framework. We enhance the current understanding of the retailer's strategic inventory by incorporating the impact of store brand competition. Our analysis reveals that it is never optimal for the retailer to carry store brand as strategic inventory even when the store brand and the national brand are close substitutes. We also find that a store brand selling retailer may become worse off when being endowed with the option of carrying strategic inventory. However, when the holding cost is sufficiently low, we show that the strategic inventory and store brand competition complement each other and benefit the retailer.

中文翻译：

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分散供应链中商店品牌竞争对零售商战略库存的影响

零售商经常出售自己的商店品牌，与全国品牌竞争。商店品牌竞争促使供应商为民族品牌报出较低的批发价。在多周期销售环境中，零售商可以通过战略库存来补充批发价格的降低。因此，商店品牌承载零售商面临以下困境。一方面，激烈的商店品牌竞争可能足以大幅降低全国品牌的批发价格。在这种情况下，零售商不需要持有任何战略库存。另一方面，仅由商店品牌竞争引起的批发价格下降幅度可能并不大。在这种情况下，零售商可能希望拥有全国品牌或商店品牌战略库存，以补充批发降价。我们通过使用两阶段博弈论框架研究商店品牌竞争对战略库存决策的影响来解决上述困境。我们通过纳入商店品牌竞争的影响来增强对零售商战略库存的当前理解。我们的分析表明，对于零售商来说，将商店品牌作为战略库存永远不是最佳选择，即使商店品牌和全国品牌是相近的替代品。我们还发现，当拥有持有战略库存的选择权时，商店品牌销售零售商的处境可能会变得更糟。然而，当持有成本足够低时，我们表明战略库存和商店品牌竞争相辅相成，使零售商受益。