Juhong Chen

Facing the increasingly serious waste electrical and electronic equipment (WEEE) recycling problem, recycling enterprises actively introduce online recycling channels, build dual channel reverse supply chains (DRSC), and use high-level recycling price and service levels to enhance consumers’ recycling enthusiasm and recycling amount. Nevertheless, in China, where the imbalance of regional development is widespread, the recycling center, third-party recycler (TPR), and third-party platform (TPP) are faced with the choices of pricing and service level when facing multi-regional consumers. This paper mainly answers the following questions: (1) When the recycling center and TPP introduce online recycling channels in multi-regional situations, how should they set online recycling price, transfer price, and service level? (2) When consumer preference for online channels changes in a certain region, how should recycling enterprises adjust their optimal pricing and service level decisions for different regions to maximize their own profits? How do the profits of recycling enterprises change? In order to solve the above problems, in this paper, we propose three pricing and service level decision models for the recycling center with online channels, namely, keeping prices unchanged, unifying all prices, and maximizing its own profits. By using the Stackelberg game to solve the model, we get the optimal pricing, service level decisions, as well as the maximum profits of the recycling center, TPP, and TPR when consumer preference changes. By analyzing the results of the model, we find that the change of consumer preference for online channels in a certain region will affect the decision and profits of multi-regional recycling enterprises. Specifically, consumer preference for online channels in a certain region will not only lead to an increase in the profits of the recycling center and TPP and a decrease in the profit of local TPRs, but also an increase in the profit of TPRs in other regions. In addition, at the beginning of introducing online channels, the recycling center can adopt two strategies to avoid conflicts among channels: keeping offline transfer prices unchanged and unifying all transfer prices, but the former promotes its economic profits more significantly.

The article's abstract is no available.

The fierce competition in the recycling industry and the rapid development of internet technology has prompted recycling centers to develop a dual-channel reverse supply chain with both offline and online recycling channels. After the introduction of online channels, recycling centers and third-party recyclers (TPR) have paid attention to the division of profits in supply chain systems and the behavior of fairness concerns. Therefore, it is necessary to help recycling enterprises make pricing decisions in consideration of fairness concerns. This paper is aimed at answering the following two main questions: (1) When the recycling center or TPR have fairness concerns, how does the optimal pricing and revenue of supply chain members change when both sides are neutral? (2) When the fairness concern coefficient changes, how does the overall revenue of the supply chain system change? How should supply chain members adjust their pricing decisions to maximize their own profits? In order to solve the above problems, Stackelberg game models were made from three aspects: both sides are neutral, only the TPR has fairness concerns, and only the recycling center has fairness concerns. Based on the results of the example analyses for the model, we found that when only the TPR has fairness concerns, the profit of the recycling center and the transfer price of offline channels will decrease, while the profit of TPR is the opposite. Furthermore, when only a recycling center has fairness concerns, it will lead to the reduction of not only the recycling price and transfer price of offline channels, but also the profits of the entire supply chain system. Specially, whether it is for a recycling center or TPR, a lower level of fairness concern coefficient has a stronger impact on pricing and revenue than at high levels.