Optimal trade credit and order quantity when trade credit impacts on both demand rate and default risk

Abstract

In practice, to attract new buyers and to avoid lasting price competition, a seller frequently offers its buyers a permissible delay in payment (ie, trade credit). However, the policy of granting a permissible delay in payment adds an additional dimension of default risk to the seller. In contrast to previous researchers for finding optimal solutions to buyers, we first propose an economic order quantity model from the seller's prospective to determine its optimal trade credit and order quantity simultaneously. In addition, we incorporate the important and relevant fact that trade credit has a positive impact on demand rate but a negative impact on receiving the buyer's debt obligations. Then the necessary and sufficient conditions to obtain the seller's optimal trade credit and order quantity are derived. An algorithm to determine the seller's optimal trade credit is also proposed. Finally, we use some numerical examples to illustrate the theoretical results and to provide some managerial insights.

Keywords:

• inventory
• trade credit
• default risk
• optimization

Acknowledgements

The authors would like to thank an Associate Editor for encouragement, and two anonymous referees for their constructive comments.