Design Crowdsourcing Supply Chain in Short Life Cycle Products

College of Business Administration, Kookmin University, 77, Jeongreung-ro, Seongbuk-gu, 02707 Seoul, Korea

^* Corresponding author: dhchoi@kookmin.ac.kr

Abstract

Design crowdsourcing is the largest open innovation model that can create value with potential consumers. It offers an opportunity to quickly respond to the market by obtaining instant designs from the crowd, freelancing designers with fundamental skills. In addition, it can secure globally innovative competitiveness without financial burden, which is more effective to start-up companies and small and medium enterprises (SMEs) in the field of seasonal product industry. Developing standardized design crowdsourcing supply chain processes and mathematical models is essential to respond to market trends and customer needs in the seasonal product industry. This study has been carried out to determine the best mechanism in the design crowdsourcing supply chain and coordinate each supply chain member whose desires meet each other. Thus, we identify contracts under which conditions can coordinate the crowdsourcing supply chain by a newsvendor model with a manufacturer and a retailer with a crowdsourcing platform. To see that, we study the coordination of the crowdsourcing supply chain through the following contracts: wholesale price, buy-back, and revenue sharing contract. For the forecasting, we present a framework of the design crowdsourcing supply chain and compare supply chain performance under crowdsourcing supply chain coordination. The summarized result shows that the wholesale price contract cannot coordinate the crowdsourcing supply chain efficiently. In contrast, buy-back and revenue sharing contracts can coordinate the crowdsourcing supply chain.