Background of the study:The Bangladeshi cosmetics market has witnessed significant growth in recent years,driven by changing consumer lifestyles,increased disposable incomes,and rising awareness of personal grooming.T...Background of the study:The Bangladeshi cosmetics market has witnessed significant growth in recent years,driven by changing consumer lifestyles,increased disposable incomes,and rising awareness of personal grooming.The study investigates the impact of content cues which influence on purchasing intention towards cosmetic brands in Bangladesh.Purpose:The basic purpose of this study was to evaluate the factors influencing consumers’purchasing intentions for cosmetic brands in Bangladesh.Specifically,the study explored the roles of various cosmetic-related attributes and their impact on purchasing intentions within the context of Bangladesh’s cosmetic industry.Research methods:A quantitative research approach was adopted,and data were collected through a structured survey targeting Bangladeshi consumers who frequently engage with cosmetic products.All the valid responses were analyzed using SmartPLS 4.0 to perform structural equation modeling.Research findings:The findings revealed that trust in cosmetic brands and competitive pricing significantly influence consumers’purchasing intentions,highlighting the importance of fostering trust and affordability.However,certain constructs,such as ethnocentric tendencies and concerns about ingredient safety,showed limited impact on consumers’decisions.Conclusion:This study contributes to the existing literature by offering empirical insights into the Bangladeshi context,particularly within the rapidly growing cosmetics market.The findings provide actionable recommendations for cosmetic brands aiming to strengthen their market position through trust-building initiatives,competitive pricing strategies,and educational campaigns to enhance consumer awareness.These insights are particularly relevant for marketing practitioners seeking to understand and respond to the unique dynamics of the Bangladeshi cosmetics industry.展开更多
The purpose of this study is to analyze factors affecting the purchasing behavior of low-income Vietnamese on e-commerce platforms.700 questionnaires were dispersed among universities,coffee shops,and Facebook communi...The purpose of this study is to analyze factors affecting the purchasing behavior of low-income Vietnamese on e-commerce platforms.700 questionnaires were dispersed among universities,coffee shops,and Facebook community groups in Vietnam.Respondents to the questionnaires were consumers of those places in Vietnam,which were randomly selected.Finally,SEM analysis was used on the data to test the hypotheses of the study.The study identified that“Subjective norms”and“Consumer attitudes”have no effect on shopping behavior on e-commerce platforms,while“Perceived behavioral control”is most affected and“Perceived risks”are least affected on shopping behavior.展开更多
This paper presents a mathematical model for components/parts unification (CPU) policy. This model considers two components/parts that are functionally interchangeable but purchased from suppliers with different price...This paper presents a mathematical model for components/parts unification (CPU) policy. This model considers two components/parts that are functionally interchangeable but purchased from suppliers with different prices and quality characteristics. Because of the buyer's quality preference and suppliers' discount rates for bulky purchases, the model assists the procurement manager to determine how best to purchase the components/parts to meet its demand while minimizing the total acquisition costs.展开更多
In order to improve the purchased goods quality management level of food processing enterprises, the causes of quality management problems were ana- lyzed, which were classified into four categories, namely, natural t...In order to improve the purchased goods quality management level of food processing enterprises, the causes of quality management problems were ana- lyzed, which were classified into four categories, namely, natural toxins in raw ma- terials, quality problems in planting and breeding, quality problems in transportation, quality problems in delivery acceptance. Then, based on the causes, eight measures to improve goods purchasing management were put forward, and graphs were used to illustrate the corresponding countermeasure to each cause. This study is of theo- retical significance for the food processing enterprises to improve the quality man- agement of purchased goods through formulating improvement measures based on their operating states.展开更多
Accurate purchase prediction in e-commerce critically depends on the quality of behavioral features.This paper proposes a layered and interpretable feature engineering framework that organizes user signals into three ...Accurate purchase prediction in e-commerce critically depends on the quality of behavioral features.This paper proposes a layered and interpretable feature engineering framework that organizes user signals into three layers:Basic,Conversion&Stability(efficiency and volatility across actions),and Advanced Interactions&Activity(crossbehavior synergies and intensity).Using real Taobao(Alibaba’s primary e-commerce platform)logs(57,976 records for 10,203 users;25 November–03 December 2017),we conducted a hierarchical,layer-wise evaluation that holds data splits and hyperparameters fixed while varying only the feature set to quantify each layer’s marginal contribution.Across logistic regression(LR),decision tree,random forest,XGBoost,and CatBoost models with stratified 5-fold cross-validation,the performance improvedmonotonically fromBasic to Conversion&Stability to Advanced features.With LR,F1 increased from 0.613(Basic)to 0.962(Advanced);boosted models achieved high discrimination(0.995 AUC Score)and an F1 score up to 0.983.Calibration and precision–recall analyses indicated strong ranking quality and acknowledged potential dataset and period biases given the short(9-day)window.By making feature contributions measurable and reproducible,the framework complements model-centric advances and offers a transparent blueprint for production-grade behavioralmodeling.The code and processed artifacts are publicly available,and future work will extend the validation to longer,seasonal datasets and hybrid approaches that combine automated feature learning with domain-driven design.展开更多
Mood-driven purchases of both goods and services are on the rise,emerging as the new engine driving consumption.MINIATURE decorative green banana trees called“No Anxiety”(a word play on the Chinese words“don’t be ...Mood-driven purchases of both goods and services are on the rise,emerging as the new engine driving consumption.MINIATURE decorative green banana trees called“No Anxiety”(a word play on the Chinese words“don’t be a green banana”),blind boxes,mountain hiking companions,and AI chat pals-many products and services that were dismissed as useless or worthless years ago are now gaining popularity among young consumers.Behind this trend is the increase in consumer spending,driven more by emotions than practical needs.展开更多
In terms of the common practice of professional grading and loose-leaf purchasing technology, the advantages of these technologies were demonstrated. The problems and proposals of the professional grading leaves purch...In terms of the common practice of professional grading and loose-leaf purchasing technology, the advantages of these technologies were demonstrated. The problems and proposals of the professional grading leaves purchasing model were also summarized and analyzed, so as to provide practical experiences for fur- ther promotion of loose-leaf purchasing.展开更多
The developments of Internet and e-commerce provide a new market place to businessman to sell their products and allow people to buy products via Internet as well as to create a new shopping media to consumers. The st...The developments of Internet and e-commerce provide a new market place to businessman to sell their products and allow people to buy products via Internet as well as to create a new shopping media to consumers. The study aims to investigate the factors affecting consumers' purchase decision via Internet and how product characteristics affect cyber shopping in Hong Kong. The study has revealed that the security of personal data,delivery time, product brand and price were the major concerns for developing cyber market. For marketing apparel products, brand loyalty becomes very important since consumers' judging confidence on the products can be increased in terms of fitting standards and quality aspects.展开更多
Procurement planning with discrete time varying demand is an important problem in Enterprise Resource Planning （ERP）. It can be described using the non-analytic mathematical programming model proposed in this paper....Procurement planning with discrete time varying demand is an important problem in Enterprise Resource Planning （ERP）. It can be described using the non-analytic mathematical programming model proposed in this paper. To solve the model we propose to use a fuzzy decision embedded genetic algorithm. The algorithm adopts an order strategy selection to simplify the original real optimization problem into binary ones. Then, a fuzzy decision quantification method is used to quantify experience from planning experts. Thus, decision rules can easily be embedded in the computation of genetic operations. This approach is applied to purchase planning problem in a practical machine tool works, where satisfactory results have been achieved.展开更多
In Europe Health Organizations are progressively modifying their management models to rationalize expenditure in order to assure better levels of effectiveness and efficiency: many countries are going to centralize th...In Europe Health Organizations are progressively modifying their management models to rationalize expenditure in order to assure better levels of effectiveness and efficiency: many countries are going to centralize the management of goods and services supply. In this paper a specific model of centralized purchasing is proposed;it is particularly suitable in cases of severe economy suffering at regional level (e.g. Campania, Lazio, Calabria in Italy) or at national level (e.g. Greece, Ireland, Italy), that means in all those cases where the scale economies, obtainable by supply centralization, would be partly or totally compromised by the extra charges induced by the missing of contractual commitments. This work aims either to analyse such specific approach for centralized purchasing or to propose a simulation model based on Petri net, which could be useful for designing and managing similar case studies.展开更多
Farmer＇s willingness for purchasing information, an important factor of farmer＇s information demand, was analyzed by logit model, according to the survey data of 535 farmers from eleven cities in Hebei province. The...Farmer＇s willingness for purchasing information, an important factor of farmer＇s information demand, was analyzed by logit model, according to the survey data of 535 farmers from eleven cities in Hebei province. The result showed that 6 factors had a significant influence on it, that is, education of farmers, per capita income of farmers, the affordability of information risk, the proportion of agricultural labor households, the type of agricultural production and the rural information service stations. On the basis of these, the related policy recommendations were proposed.展开更多
In many compames, cost management models are abandoned due to their complexity and because of this, the academic literature has experienced a downturn in publications regarding cost management. This paper deepens the ...In many compames, cost management models are abandoned due to their complexity and because of this, the academic literature has experienced a downturn in publications regarding cost management. This paper deepens the understanding regarding the practical usability of cost management models for purchasing decisions, and provides a framework for determining a desired complexity of cost management in different purchasing environments. The complexity is defined along three dimensions identified in literature and the different purchasing environments stem from an adaptation of Kraljic＇s （1983） matrix.展开更多
This paper is about the study of purchasing cooperation with the supplier. It is through expanding some courses including demand analysis, choosing supplier, founding cooperation relationship formally and strengthenin...This paper is about the study of purchasing cooperation with the supplier. It is through expanding some courses including demand analysis, choosing supplier, founding cooperation relationship formally and strengthening the cooperation, as well as several key questions, such as sourcing strategy, to estimate and select the supplier, authentication management, and purchase of technology.展开更多
Objective To study the characteristics, specific functions and policy improvement process of the Group Purchasing Organizations (GPOs) in the U.S. and to provide references for drug group purchasing practices in China...Objective To study the characteristics, specific functions and policy improvement process of the Group Purchasing Organizations (GPOs) in the U.S. and to provide references for drug group purchasing practices in China. Methods Domestic and foreign relevant literatures, websites were reviewed or searched to analyze the functions and policy improvement process of the GPOs in the U.S. so as to provide references for drug group purchasing practices in China. Results and Conclusion As a third party in the U.S. GPOs has formed a relatively integrated business process and projects service system after long-term development. Supported by corresponding policies and industrial regulations, GPOs have made a great contribution to control the growth of medical and healthcare expenses and improve the efficiency of medical institutions, and its development experience can enlighten the practices in China.展开更多
The mathematical expectation value method is a commonly used method in risk decision-making. This paper studies the problem of how to arrange the purchase plan in order to get the maximum expected profit;considering t...The mathematical expectation value method is a commonly used method in risk decision-making. This paper studies the problem of how to arrange the purchase plan in order to get the maximum expected profit;considering the applicable principles of mathematical expectation, the decision method for getting the optimal decision scheme is given. Finally, we do simulation and stability analysis on an example and obtain the reasonable result. This result shows that mathematical expectation value method is effective in solving the problem of risk decision.展开更多
To increase customers'satisfaction and promote product's competitiveness,a customized extended warranty(EW)policy is proposed,where the diversities in both the usage rate and purchase date are considered.The m...To increase customers'satisfaction and promote product's competitiveness,a customized extended warranty(EW)policy is proposed,where the diversities in both the usage rate and purchase date are considered.The marginal approach is applied to describe the product's two-dimensional failure in terms of age and usage,respectively.Moreover,minimal repair is adopted to restore the failure,and the virtual age method is applied to depict the effect of preventive maintenance(PM).On this basis,an optimization model is established to minimize the maintenance cost and warranty cost from the manufacturer's view,and multiple factors are taken into account,including the PM's intensity and its period,and EW's interval,etc.A numerical case study is provided to illustrate the effectiveness of the proposed approach.The results show that by considering the product's usage rate and the purchasing date of EW,the number of failures as well as the cost of maintenance and warranty can be reduced effectively.展开更多
In the global supply chain in a setting characterized by exchange rate uncertainties,it is quite necessary to focus on comparative research trying to find out which kind of purchasing strategy is better in different s...In the global supply chain in a setting characterized by exchange rate uncertainties,it is quite necessary to focus on comparative research trying to find out which kind of purchasing strategy is better in different situations.The two common global purchasing strategies,risk sharing(RS)and quantity flexibility(QF),are selected to be compared.Using a real-options approach,the valuation models of RS and QF purchasing contracts are established.By means of binomial lattice technique,numerical simulation and sensitivity analysis of two stochastic dynamic programs are presented.The effects on expected discounted value by changing relative parameters are described clearly.Based on comparative analysis,it is concluded that the QF purchasing strategy is better than that of the RS especially where great volatility exists for exchange rate processes in the global supply chain.展开更多
Under the seller's quantity discount, buyers self-organize or rely on a third party to aggregate their pur- chasing quantities to obtain lower prices. Because of the unequal member contributions in the cooperative...Under the seller's quantity discount, buyers self-organize or rely on a third party to aggregate their pur- chasing quantities to obtain lower prices. Because of the unequal member contributions in the cooperative pur- chasing organization, the buyers' strategy is diferent, the members often fluctuate, and the organizations do not sustain themselves. An efective mechanism is necessary to improve the performance of purchasing groups. We study the various forms of cost allocation mechanism in practice. Diferent allocation rules may have influence on the buyers' behavior(i.e., purchasing quantities, whether joining the organization or not). We analyze the serial cost allocation and equilibrium purchasing quantity based on a Nash equilibrium, and the results show that each buyer is worse of when not participating in the existence buying organization of the other buyers. We further find that the serial mechanism just confirms the most efcient Nash equilibrium: reasonable cost allocation rule is necessary for the subjects to identify their optimal strategy.展开更多
基金Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to Meher Neger,Comilla University,Comilla,Bangladesh.
文摘Background of the study:The Bangladeshi cosmetics market has witnessed significant growth in recent years,driven by changing consumer lifestyles,increased disposable incomes,and rising awareness of personal grooming.The study investigates the impact of content cues which influence on purchasing intention towards cosmetic brands in Bangladesh.Purpose:The basic purpose of this study was to evaluate the factors influencing consumers’purchasing intentions for cosmetic brands in Bangladesh.Specifically,the study explored the roles of various cosmetic-related attributes and their impact on purchasing intentions within the context of Bangladesh’s cosmetic industry.Research methods:A quantitative research approach was adopted,and data were collected through a structured survey targeting Bangladeshi consumers who frequently engage with cosmetic products.All the valid responses were analyzed using SmartPLS 4.0 to perform structural equation modeling.Research findings:The findings revealed that trust in cosmetic brands and competitive pricing significantly influence consumers’purchasing intentions,highlighting the importance of fostering trust and affordability.However,certain constructs,such as ethnocentric tendencies and concerns about ingredient safety,showed limited impact on consumers’decisions.Conclusion:This study contributes to the existing literature by offering empirical insights into the Bangladeshi context,particularly within the rapidly growing cosmetics market.The findings provide actionable recommendations for cosmetic brands aiming to strengthen their market position through trust-building initiatives,competitive pricing strategies,and educational campaigns to enhance consumer awareness.These insights are particularly relevant for marketing practitioners seeking to understand and respond to the unique dynamics of the Bangladeshi cosmetics industry.
文摘The purpose of this study is to analyze factors affecting the purchasing behavior of low-income Vietnamese on e-commerce platforms.700 questionnaires were dispersed among universities,coffee shops,and Facebook community groups in Vietnam.Respondents to the questionnaires were consumers of those places in Vietnam,which were randomly selected.Finally,SEM analysis was used on the data to test the hypotheses of the study.The study identified that“Subjective norms”and“Consumer attitudes”have no effect on shopping behavior on e-commerce platforms,while“Perceived behavioral control”is most affected and“Perceived risks”are least affected on shopping behavior.
文摘This paper presents a mathematical model for components/parts unification (CPU) policy. This model considers two components/parts that are functionally interchangeable but purchased from suppliers with different prices and quality characteristics. Because of the buyer's quality preference and suppliers' discount rates for bulky purchases, the model assists the procurement manager to determine how best to purchase the components/parts to meet its demand while minimizing the total acquisition costs.
基金Supported by the Key Scientific Research Program of Beijing Municipal Commission of Education in 2013~~
文摘In order to improve the purchased goods quality management level of food processing enterprises, the causes of quality management problems were ana- lyzed, which were classified into four categories, namely, natural toxins in raw ma- terials, quality problems in planting and breeding, quality problems in transportation, quality problems in delivery acceptance. Then, based on the causes, eight measures to improve goods purchasing management were put forward, and graphs were used to illustrate the corresponding countermeasure to each cause. This study is of theo- retical significance for the food processing enterprises to improve the quality man- agement of purchased goods through formulating improvement measures based on their operating states.
基金supported by the research fund of Hanyang University(HY-202500000001616).
文摘Accurate purchase prediction in e-commerce critically depends on the quality of behavioral features.This paper proposes a layered and interpretable feature engineering framework that organizes user signals into three layers:Basic,Conversion&Stability(efficiency and volatility across actions),and Advanced Interactions&Activity(crossbehavior synergies and intensity).Using real Taobao(Alibaba’s primary e-commerce platform)logs(57,976 records for 10,203 users;25 November–03 December 2017),we conducted a hierarchical,layer-wise evaluation that holds data splits and hyperparameters fixed while varying only the feature set to quantify each layer’s marginal contribution.Across logistic regression(LR),decision tree,random forest,XGBoost,and CatBoost models with stratified 5-fold cross-validation,the performance improvedmonotonically fromBasic to Conversion&Stability to Advanced features.With LR,F1 increased from 0.613(Basic)to 0.962(Advanced);boosted models achieved high discrimination(0.995 AUC Score)and an F1 score up to 0.983.Calibration and precision–recall analyses indicated strong ranking quality and acknowledged potential dataset and period biases given the short(9-day)window.By making feature contributions measurable and reproducible,the framework complements model-centric advances and offers a transparent blueprint for production-grade behavioralmodeling.The code and processed artifacts are publicly available,and future work will extend the validation to longer,seasonal datasets and hybrid approaches that combine automated feature learning with domain-driven design.
文摘Mood-driven purchases of both goods and services are on the rise,emerging as the new engine driving consumption.MINIATURE decorative green banana trees called“No Anxiety”(a word play on the Chinese words“don’t be a green banana”),blind boxes,mountain hiking companions,and AI chat pals-many products and services that were dismissed as useless or worthless years ago are now gaining popularity among young consumers.Behind this trend is the increase in consumer spending,driven more by emotions than practical needs.
文摘In terms of the common practice of professional grading and loose-leaf purchasing technology, the advantages of these technologies were demonstrated. The problems and proposals of the professional grading leaves purchasing model were also summarized and analyzed, so as to provide practical experiences for fur- ther promotion of loose-leaf purchasing.
文摘The developments of Internet and e-commerce provide a new market place to businessman to sell their products and allow people to buy products via Internet as well as to create a new shopping media to consumers. The study aims to investigate the factors affecting consumers' purchase decision via Internet and how product characteristics affect cyber shopping in Hong Kong. The study has revealed that the security of personal data,delivery time, product brand and price were the major concerns for developing cyber market. For marketing apparel products, brand loyalty becomes very important since consumers' judging confidence on the products can be increased in terms of fitting standards and quality aspects.
基金This work was supported by Hong Kong Polytechnic University(No.G.45.37.T363),the National Natural Science Foundation of PRC(No.70431003,60521003).
文摘Procurement planning with discrete time varying demand is an important problem in Enterprise Resource Planning （ERP）. It can be described using the non-analytic mathematical programming model proposed in this paper. To solve the model we propose to use a fuzzy decision embedded genetic algorithm. The algorithm adopts an order strategy selection to simplify the original real optimization problem into binary ones. Then, a fuzzy decision quantification method is used to quantify experience from planning experts. Thus, decision rules can easily be embedded in the computation of genetic operations. This approach is applied to purchase planning problem in a practical machine tool works, where satisfactory results have been achieved.
文摘In Europe Health Organizations are progressively modifying their management models to rationalize expenditure in order to assure better levels of effectiveness and efficiency: many countries are going to centralize the management of goods and services supply. In this paper a specific model of centralized purchasing is proposed;it is particularly suitable in cases of severe economy suffering at regional level (e.g. Campania, Lazio, Calabria in Italy) or at national level (e.g. Greece, Ireland, Italy), that means in all those cases where the scale economies, obtainable by supply centralization, would be partly or totally compromised by the extra charges induced by the missing of contractual commitments. This work aims either to analyse such specific approach for centralized purchasing or to propose a simulation model based on Petri net, which could be useful for designing and managing similar case studies.
文摘Farmer＇s willingness for purchasing information, an important factor of farmer＇s information demand, was analyzed by logit model, according to the survey data of 535 farmers from eleven cities in Hebei province. The result showed that 6 factors had a significant influence on it, that is, education of farmers, per capita income of farmers, the affordability of information risk, the proportion of agricultural labor households, the type of agricultural production and the rural information service stations. On the basis of these, the related policy recommendations were proposed.
文摘In many compames, cost management models are abandoned due to their complexity and because of this, the academic literature has experienced a downturn in publications regarding cost management. This paper deepens the understanding regarding the practical usability of cost management models for purchasing decisions, and provides a framework for determining a desired complexity of cost management in different purchasing environments. The complexity is defined along three dimensions identified in literature and the different purchasing environments stem from an adaptation of Kraljic＇s （1983） matrix.
文摘This paper is about the study of purchasing cooperation with the supplier. It is through expanding some courses including demand analysis, choosing supplier, founding cooperation relationship formally and strengthening the cooperation, as well as several key questions, such as sourcing strategy, to estimate and select the supplier, authentication management, and purchase of technology.
文摘Objective To study the characteristics, specific functions and policy improvement process of the Group Purchasing Organizations (GPOs) in the U.S. and to provide references for drug group purchasing practices in China. Methods Domestic and foreign relevant literatures, websites were reviewed or searched to analyze the functions and policy improvement process of the GPOs in the U.S. so as to provide references for drug group purchasing practices in China. Results and Conclusion As a third party in the U.S. GPOs has formed a relatively integrated business process and projects service system after long-term development. Supported by corresponding policies and industrial regulations, GPOs have made a great contribution to control the growth of medical and healthcare expenses and improve the efficiency of medical institutions, and its development experience can enlighten the practices in China.
文摘The mathematical expectation value method is a commonly used method in risk decision-making. This paper studies the problem of how to arrange the purchase plan in order to get the maximum expected profit;considering the applicable principles of mathematical expectation, the decision method for getting the optimal decision scheme is given. Finally, we do simulation and stability analysis on an example and obtain the reasonable result. This result shows that mathematical expectation value method is effective in solving the problem of risk decision.
基金The National Natural Science Foundation of China(No.71671035)the Project of 2018 Intelligent Manufacturing Comprehensive Standard of Ministry of Industry and Information Technology of Chinathe Open Fund of Jiangsu Wind Power Engineering Technology Center of China(No.ZK19-03-03)。
文摘To increase customers'satisfaction and promote product's competitiveness,a customized extended warranty(EW)policy is proposed,where the diversities in both the usage rate and purchase date are considered.The marginal approach is applied to describe the product's two-dimensional failure in terms of age and usage,respectively.Moreover,minimal repair is adopted to restore the failure,and the virtual age method is applied to depict the effect of preventive maintenance(PM).On this basis,an optimization model is established to minimize the maintenance cost and warranty cost from the manufacturer's view,and multiple factors are taken into account,including the PM's intensity and its period,and EW's interval,etc.A numerical case study is provided to illustrate the effectiveness of the proposed approach.The results show that by considering the product's usage rate and the purchasing date of EW,the number of failures as well as the cost of maintenance and warranty can be reduced effectively.
基金The National Key Technology R&D Program of China during the 11th Five-Year Plan Period(No.2006BAH02A06)CSC(China Scholarship Council)Scholarship Program for Graduate Student Studying Abroad 2007
文摘In the global supply chain in a setting characterized by exchange rate uncertainties,it is quite necessary to focus on comparative research trying to find out which kind of purchasing strategy is better in different situations.The two common global purchasing strategies,risk sharing(RS)and quantity flexibility(QF),are selected to be compared.Using a real-options approach,the valuation models of RS and QF purchasing contracts are established.By means of binomial lattice technique,numerical simulation and sensitivity analysis of two stochastic dynamic programs are presented.The effects on expected discounted value by changing relative parameters are described clearly.Based on comparative analysis,it is concluded that the QF purchasing strategy is better than that of the RS especially where great volatility exists for exchange rate processes in the global supply chain.
基金the National Natural Science Foundation of China(No.70932004)the Social Science Foun-dation of China(No.11&ZD174)the Foundation of Humanities and Social Sciences in Universities of Shandong(No.J13WG68)
文摘Under the seller's quantity discount, buyers self-organize or rely on a third party to aggregate their pur- chasing quantities to obtain lower prices. Because of the unequal member contributions in the cooperative pur- chasing organization, the buyers' strategy is diferent, the members often fluctuate, and the organizations do not sustain themselves. An efective mechanism is necessary to improve the performance of purchasing groups. We study the various forms of cost allocation mechanism in practice. Diferent allocation rules may have influence on the buyers' behavior(i.e., purchasing quantities, whether joining the organization or not). We analyze the serial cost allocation and equilibrium purchasing quantity based on a Nash equilibrium, and the results show that each buyer is worse of when not participating in the existence buying organization of the other buyers. We further find that the serial mechanism just confirms the most efcient Nash equilibrium: reasonable cost allocation rule is necessary for the subjects to identify their optimal strategy.
