Impacts of sales mode and recycling mode on a closed-loop supply chain

Abstract

This paper forms a closed-loop supply chain (CLSC) consisting of a manufacturer and a retailer, within which the retail channel or dual-channel sales mode is chosen for selling products while the manufacturer, retailer or hybrid recycling mode is chosen for collecting used products. Based on different sales modes and recycling modes, six-game theory models are formulated to derive the optimal pricing and recycling rate decisions. Through the model comparisons and the numerical analysis, we investigate the strategies for choosing the optimal sales mode and the optimal recycling mode. We find that the customers, the environment and the manufacturer always prefer the dual-channel sales mode. However, the retailer prefers the dual-channel (retail channel) sales mode when the discount coefficient of demand is relatively low (high). Moreover, the customers, the environment and the manufacturer prefer the hybrid (retailer) recycling mode when the competing intensity of recycling is relatively low (high). However, the retailer prefers the hybrid (retailer) recycling mode in the retail channel CLSC while preferring the hybrid (manufacturer) recycling mode in the dual-channel CLSC when the competing intensity of recycling is relatively low (high).

KEYWORDS:

• Closed-loop supply chain
• sales mode selection
• recycling mode selection

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Data availability statement

All data generated or analysed during this study are included in this published article.

Additional information

Funding

This paper is partially supported by Natural Science Foundation of Sichuan Province (2023NSFSC1017), National Natural Science Foundation of China (71802168), Humanities and Social Science Foundation of Ministry of Education of China (18YJC630165).

Notes on contributors

Nana Wan

Nana Wan received the Ph.D. degree in business administration from the School of Management and Economics, University of Electronic Science and Technology of China, Chengdu, China, in 2016. She is currently a Professor with the School of Economics and Management, Southwest University of Science and Technology, Mianyang. Her current research areas include supply chain management and operations management. Her publications have appeared in International Journal of Production Economics, International Transactions in Operational Research, Industrial Management & Data Systems, and other journals.