Summary: This paper investigates a supply contract design by a dominant manufacturer who faces a stochastic demand during a selling season. The manufacturer has several estimations of the supplier’s cost with corresponding probabilities, that is, asymmetric cost information. The manufacturer designs a menu of call option contracts that include three variables: a supply order, an option, and an exercise price. We determine the optimal negative correlation between option and exercise prices as well as closed-form formulas for the optimal supply orders. The results show that in the optimal menu of contracts either the option or the exercise price may be omitted from the menu, whereas the supply orders should always be customized for each supplier type. We show that in this problem, optimal profit assignment between contract partners under put and bidirectional option contracts is the same as call option contract studied. Numerical analysis including managerial insights is presented.
{© 2017 The Authors. International Transactions in Operational Research © 2017 International Federation of Operational Research Societies}