PRICING AND REMANUFACTURING DECISIONS FOR TWO SUBSTITUTABLE PRODUCTS WITH A COMMON RETAILER

摘要

This paper studies pricing and remanufacturing decisions for two substitutable products in a supply chain with two manufacturers and one common retailer. The two manufacturers produce two substitutable products and sell them to the retailer. Specifically, the first manufacturer is a traditional manufacturer who produces the new product directly from raw material, while the second manufacturer has incorporated a remanufacturing process for used product into his original production system, so that he can manufacture a new product directly from raw material, or remanufacture part or whole of a returned unit into a new product. We establish seven game models by considering the chain members' horizontal and vertical competitions, and obtain the corresponding closed-form expressions for equilibrium solution. Then, the equilibrium characteristics with respect to the second manufacturer's remanufacturing decision and all channel members' pricing decisions are explored, the sensitivity analysis of equilibrium solution is conducted for some model parameters, and the maximal profits and equilibrium solutions obtained in different game models are compared by numerical analyses. Based on these results, some interesting and valuable economic and managerial insights are established.