Abstract
The credit of suppliers is influenced by factors such as quality of products, promptness of delivering, service level, etc. Reduction in credit value can lead to suppliers' loss of profit, and this profit loss is named credit cost. Putting forward the concept of credit cost for the first time, this paper, starting from delivering situation, studied how backorder affects credit cost, established two models considering respectively the existence and absence of communication between suppliers and customers, and under the condition that credit loss affects demand rate, verified the existence of credit cost utilizing numerical calculation. © 2013 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg.