Jiajia Nie

Choosing reverse channels under collection responsibility sharing in a closed-loop supply chain with re-manufacturing

This paper considers a closed-loop supply chain with re-manufacturing consisting of retailers, manufacturers and third-party logistics service providers; all participating in the product recycling responsibilities. The effectiveness of methods that can be used to share responsibilities amongst these parties is quantified using different reverse channels. First, re-manufacturing models with three different reverse channels for retailer collection, manufacturer collection and third-party collection are developed using collection responsibility sharing. Next, by comparing these models with the case of no collection responsibility sharing, the effectiveness of responsibility sharing is analysed and quantified. The results for the three models support the following conclusions: (i) from the point of view of the retailer, third-party collection is always the worst choice; (ii) the choice between retailer collection and manufacturer collection depends on the cost parameter representing the resources required in performing the reverse collection tasks; (iii) from the point of view the manufacturer, when the value of the cost parameter is small, collection by manufacturer is the best choice; retailer collection will be best for high values of the cost parameter.

Collective Recycling Responsibility in Closed-Loop Fashion Supply Chains with a Third Party: Financial Sharing or Physical Sharing?

We develop three closed-loop supply chain models where manufacturers can utilize financial or physical support to push a third party to collect the used fashion product for remanufacturing. We first examine two strategies for the collective recycling responsibility (CRR), namely, the financial sharing (FS) and the physical sharing (PS), using the model with no CRR as a benchmark. After that, we conduct a detailed comparison among the three models in terms of the retail price, demand, return rate, and the profits received by the supply chain members. With this study, we find the following. (i) The FS or PS support offered by the manufacturer to the third party will result in a lower retail price and a higher demand. (ii) The optimal return rate with PS scheme is always higher than that without the CRR, and the one with FS scheme is at least as high as that without the CRR. (iii) All the members in the closed-loop supply chain can always benefit from the CRR. In addition, (iv) which scheme of the FS, PS, or no CRR is the best for the supply chain members will depend heavily on the transfer price of the used product.

Optimal pricing and advertising competition in two supply chains with deterministic demand

In this paper, the impact of advertisement on the competitiveness of supply chains is examined with a price and advertising sensitive linear deterministic demand. Within the two supply chains investigated, two retailers compete for supply to customers and two manufacturers compete for advertisement. The pricing and the advertising level decisions in the system are analysed by two two-stage Stackelberg games with different decision rights designated to the parties involved. The manufacturers first set the advertising levels. Then, the retailers choose the retail prices simultaneously and independently. The retail price equilibrium and the advertising level equilibrium are characterised in centralised supply chain and in decentralised supply chain. Also, this paper shows how the optimal retail prices and advertising levels change with system parameters. In the system, there is an optimal degree of demand substitution, which minimises the manufacturers advertising investment cost. Moreover, as retailer 1s market potential increases, the average advertising level decreases in the industry.

The impact of third-party remanufacturing on the forward supply chain: a blessing or a curse?

It is widely agreed that the entry of third-party remanufacturers (TPRs) hurts original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) because remanufacturing cannibalises the new product sales. In this paper, motivated by the practice of mobile phone remanufacturing, we develop a game theoretical model to revisit the impact of third-party remanufacturing on a forward supply chain in which one OEM purchases critical components from one dominant supplier. The OEM may operate the remanufacturing business as cost-efficient as the TPR. Our analytical results show that regardless of the OEM’s remanufacturing capability, third-party remanufacturing could be beneficial to the OEM in that the supplier would lower the wholesale price as a response to the entry of the TPR; in addition, compared with the case without remanufacturing, third-party remanufacturing is always detrimental to the supplier, but the supplier should not always attempt to deter the entry of the TPR because third-party remanufacturing could be less detrimental than the OEM’s in-house remanufacturing. Under certain conditions, the two players in the forward supply chain both prefer third-party remanufacturing over in-house remanufacturing. The key intuition driving this finding is that third-party remanufacturing makes the OEM and the supplier allied; while in-house remanufacturing makes them against each other.

Dynamic cooperative promotion models with competing retailers and negative promotional effects on brand image

Abstract This paper considers the cooperative promotion in a supply chain consisting of a manufacturer and two competing retailers. In particular, the promotion efforts of retailers have a positive impact on their demands, but a negative impact on the manufacturer’s brand image. Meanwhile, we allow both myopic and far-sighted strategic behaviors of retailers. Three strategic models, i.e., two far-sighted retailers (FF), one far-sighted retailer and one myopic retailer (MF/FM) and two myopic retailers (MM), are analyzed by differential game and the feedback Stackelberg equilibrium of three models are derived via HJB equation. The finding is that the manufacturer as well as the supply chain always prefers the retailer with same strategic behaviors, despite the fact that retailers do not always stick to the same behaviors. We further extend our model into the scenario of asymmetric retailers.

Business strategy analysis for an advertising service supply chain: a study with the publication industry

In the publication industry, three business strategies are commonly observed, namely the subscription-based strategy, ad-sponsored strategy, and mixed strategy. In order to obtain managerial insights into the three business strategies, we consider a supply chain in which a publisher sells a product such as newspaper and magazine to end-customers. Furthermore, the publisher may also sell advertisement space to advertisers. In such a supply chain, the publisher determines the optimal business strategy and corresponding prices and fees; the advertisers determine the amount of advertisement space to purchase from the publisher. We formulate a game-theory model of the above advertising service supply chain. Under this model, we first characterize each firm’s equilibrium decisions under each business strategy. We then compare the publisher’s profit under the three strategies to determine the publisher’s optimal strategy. We show that when the fixed cost of the mixed strategy is sufficiently low, it is optimal for the publisher to adopt the mixed strategy irrespective of the number of advertisers. If the fixed cost of the mixed strategy is high, it is optimal for the publisher to adopt either the subscription-based or ad-sponsored strategy, depending on the other parameters’ values. However, advertisers do not always obtain their highest profits under the publisher’s optimal strategy. We show regions where the publisher and advertisers have conflicting incentives. Both the fixed cost of the mixed strategy and the number of advertisers turn out to be key factors that lead to incentive conflicts in the supply chain.