ABSTRACT
Revenue sharing contracts (RSCs) have gained considerable popularity over the past two decades—particularly among prominent platform distributors such as the Apple App Store, Google Play, and Amazon— and have therefore attracted a great deal of research attention in the domain of supply-chain management. This study is the first to review the literature dealing with RSCs, a literature in which the number of articles has been growing consistently over the years. Specifically, we aim to provide a comprehensive overview of the state of the art of the research field, and to identify potentially fruitful areas for further exploration. To this end, we have carried out a content analysis of 148 carefully selected papers that address various aspects of RSCs in the domains of operations research and operations management. Our survey classifies and discusses the reviewed papers along numerous dimensions of interest, including the types of contract they incorporate and the research questions they address. We provide mathematical formulations of the two RSC structures that are most prevalent in research and in practice: (i) a wholesale-price contract that incorporates an added revenue-sharing mechanism; and (ii) a consignment contract with revenue sharing.
Acknowledgments
This research was supported by the ISRAEL SCIENCE FOUNDATION (grant number 1571/20).
The authors thank the four anonymous referees, the AE, and the Editor-in-Chief for their useful comments, which improved this paper.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).
Notes
1 see http://www.foraker.com/ios-app-distribution-options and https://support.google.com/googleplay/android-developer/answer/112622?hl=iw
2 see https://sellercentral.amazon.com/gp/help/external/200336920/ref=asus_soa_p_reffees?ld=NSGoogle
3 Xie et al. (Citation2017) used a revenue-sharing mechanism in a forward supply chain as well, which follows WCRS1.
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Notes on contributors
Nelly Bart
Nelly Bart is a Ph.D. candidate in Operations Management at Bar Ilan University, Israel. She holds a B.A. in Economics from Tel-Aviv University and an M.Sc. in Financial Engineering from Bar-Ilan University. Currently, she is a Teacher in the Department of Industrial Engineering at Ruppin Academic Center.
Tatyana Chernonog
Tatyana Chernonog received her Ph.D. in Logistic Management from Bar Ilan University, Israel. She is currently a Senior Lecturer with tenure in the Department of Management at Bar Ilan University. Her research interests mainly focus on supply chain management and operations management. Her publications have appeared in International Journal of Production Research, European Journal of Operational Research, International Journal of Production Economics and other leading journals.
Tal Avinadav
Tal Avinadav is an Associate Professor of Operations Management in the Department of Management at Bar-Ilan University. He holds a B.Sc. in Industrial Engineering, an M.B.A. in Technology Management, and a Ph.D. in Operations Management, all from Tel-Aviv University. His areas of expertise include supply chain management of virtual products and inventory control. His papers have been published in leading journals of Operations Management, such as International Journal of Production Research, International Journal of Production Economics and European Journal of Operational Research.