Green and Platform Supply Chain Management

Green and Platform Supply Chain Management: Comparison

Please note this is a comparison between Version 2 by Guitao Zhang and Version 1 by Guitao Zhang.

绿色研发生产越来越受到企业的重视。绿色行为可以满足消费者的绿色偏好和政府政策，在经济的快速发展造成环境问题和全球气候恶化的困境中，已成为国际社会关注的重要问题。随着互联网和数字经济的快速发展，以网络化、数字化、智能化技术为基础的平台经济，有利于推动产业结构优化升级，提升用户体验，繁荣各种市场，提高全社会资源配置效率，为传统经济注入新的活力。企业逐渐意识到，平台是供应链体系建设和发展的核心。它可以充分发挥其数据优势，在产业链运行过程中减少和消除碳排放。平台可以为制造商提供两种合作模式，即代理销售和转售。Expanding green consumption market and precise data promotion advantages make the platform economy have a significant effect on influencing manufacturers to carry out green R&D and production activities, and government subsidies have a positive incentive effect. In this context, for the studies about platform supply chain management with manufacturer’s green production and the platform’s marketing activities simultaneously are rare, we consider that a manufacturer invests in green technologies to produce products and sell them through a smart platform supply chain by an agency selling or reselling strategy, in which the platform provides data-driven marketing technology to promote green products. Four game models are constructed to study the operational efficiency of the platform supply chain considering selling strategy difference and government subsidy.

supply chain management
online platform
green technology
government subsidy

1. ESG and Green Supply Chain Management

The green R&D and production have gained more and more enterprise attention. Green behavior can meet consumers green preferences and government policies in the dilemma that the rapid development of the economy creates environmental problems and the deterioration of the global climate has become an important issue of concern to the international community. In practice, Haier Bio has been actively undertaking the corporate responsibility of green development, and the concept of green and green development runs through the whole process and chain of production and operation, constantly promoting the green transformation and upgrading of the enterprise. In the design process, carbon neutral design is adopted from the beginning of design to realize the energy-saving upgrade of products. In response to the national goal of carbon neutralization in 2045, “rapidly reduce green emissions, actively carry out carbon reduction work in the field of R&D”, China Great Wall focuses on the three key areas of “energy saving green technology, green material application, energy reconstruction”, and develops green vehicles to help China’s environmental protection cause. At the same time, major political and legislative initiatives have been proposed to better incentivize enterprises’ green activities. For example, The Paris climate Conference in 2016 resulted in a major intergovernmental agreement obliging signatory governments and government agencies to provide incentives in terms of financial or legislative assistance to support and scale up green products and technologies in different industries. Chinese President Xi Jinping announced at the Climate Ambition Summit sponsored by the United Nations and relevant countries that China will adopt more effective policies and measures, including subsidy for manufacturers based on the number of green and low-carbon products they produce and sell. Through subsidy, the government can stimulate manufacturers to increase investment in green technology and improve the greenness of products. For the above reasons, the areas about supply chain operation and government subsidy strategy for green R&D always are the research hotspots in theory and practice.

Sustainable and green activities can help improve enterprises’ environmental, social and governance (ESG) performance, which has been proved by some scholars from an empirical perspective. For example, Husted et al. [5] use ESG data of 459 enterprises from nine countries to analyze and find that sustainable governance can improve ESG performance. Wang et al. [6] conduct an annual observation sample study of 1980 enterprises from the top 500 green companies in the United States from 2009 to 2013 and point out that green activities of enterprises had significant effects on their social responsibility fulfillment and financial performance improvement. Yang et al. [7] confirmed that clean energy, green finance, and economic development are important and positive signs for sustainable practices based on G7 sustainable economies from 2010 to 2018. Tan et al. [8] investigated the impact of ESG rating on enterprise green innovation based on data related to Chinese A-share listed companies from 2010 to 2018, and showed that ESG rating can significantly promote the quantity and quality of enterprise green innovation.

With the rapid development of the Internet and the digital economy, platform economy based on networking, digitalization, and smart technology is conducive to promoting the optimization and upgrading of industrial structure, improving user experience, flourishing various markets, improving the efficiency of resource allocation in the whole society, and injecting new vitality into the traditional economy. Enterprises gradually realize that platform is the core of supply chain system construction and development. It can give full play to its data advantages to reduce and eliminate carbon emissions in the operation process of the industrial chain. Therefore, it is important to study how the government guides manufacturers to participate in the operation of smart platform supply chain, and to invest in green technologies to improve ecological benefits while taking into account economic benefits. Platforms can provide two cooperative modes for manufacturers to sale products, agency selling, and reselling. For example, JD.COM works with brands such as Huawei, Coach and Burberry under the reselling model, in which the brands sell their products to JD.COM at wholesale prices, which JD.COM sells to consumers at a markup. However, when JD.COM cooperates with Topsports, Sephora and other brands, it adopts the agent selling mode. By this way, the manufacture can sell products to consumers directly through the platform of JD.COM, and JD.COM charges a certain service commission fee (JD.COM public welfare, 2020). Amazon started with a reselling mode, as the mode developed, Amazon broke the reselling model which is similar to the entity retail model, and adopted an agency selling mode to help enterprises sell products directly to the terminal consumer. In addition, due to the platform’s natural data collection advantages, the platform supply chain is based on data-driven analysis to describe, predict, analyze, and guide consumer behavior, providing better marketing activities for green products, that is data-driven marketing (DDM). For example, in September 2018, Taobao created a series of data-based and content-based targeted marketing programs for Shiseido, and established Shiseido’s specific data center bank to provide data for marketing. In 2018, JD.COM adopted data-driven marketing to cooperate with many well-known brands in the industry, such as mobile phone brand Huawei, food brand Lang Jiu, and home appliance brand Bear. At the same time, data-driven marketing generates new types of costs, such as data collection costs and data analysis costs. Research on the promotion effect of smart marketing level on green products can provide effective guidance and help for green R&D activities in reality. Operating platform supply chain can help enterprises to improve the efficiency of green technology investment activities and realize the overall development of economic and ecological benefits.

Based on the ESG concepts and measures proposed by the above achievements, green production and operation activities from the perspective of supply chain can well achieve the goal of balancing economic growth and environmental protection. In 1996, scholars from Michigan State University proposed the embryonic form of green supply chain management theory. Subsequently, some scholars put forward the idea that green supply chain management is sustainable and ecological management [9,10,11]. Nagel [12] showed that green procurement is an extremely important driving factor in green supply chain management, and environmental awareness should penetrate every link of the supply chain. Hall et al. [13] believed that green supply chain management is an effective way for enterprises to bear environmental pressure and put environmental innovation concept through the whole supply chain process, to realize environmental protection. Zsidisin et al. [14] researched how green supply chain management integrates green environmental awareness into the whole process of product manufacturing and recycling to carry out environmental management. Tachizawa et al. [15] explored how green supply chain management can improve environmental benefits and maximize resource utilization as the goal. Rahmani et al. [16] defined green supply chain management as considering the necessity of environment and paying attention to ecological benefits in product design, material supply, processing, transportation, and product recycling and reuse interaction. Nekmahmud et al. [17] systematically combed the literatures about green supply chain management and identify the obstacles and key factors of implementing green supply chain management. Hariharasudan et al. [18] assessed how green supply chain management is still the focus of scholars’ attention and plays an important role in changing environmental issues. Astawa et al. [19] discovered that the practice of green supply chain management has positive impact on the performance and competitive advantage of five-star hotels by conducting analysis of 145 respondents. Kot et al. [20] investigated the supply chain management practices of 613 small and medium-sized enterprises around the world, and found that environmental and social sustainability are the shutdown factors that can affect supply chain management performance. The above scholars published their research on green supply chain management from different industries and perspectives, and some scholars discuss the operation management of green supply chain from the perspective of manufacturers’ green R&D activities and consumers’ participation. For example, Liu et al. [21] studied whether suppliers invest in carbon emission reduction and establish a decision-making model for green agricultural supply chain. The results showed that cooperation between manufacturers and retailers can achieve the goal of protecting environment and members’ profits. Ma et al. [22] believed that green supply chain management is an environmental management mode to attract consumers to carry out green consumption through manufacturers’ green emission reduction technologies, thus alleviating the global environmental crisis. Zhu et al. [23] studied the design and development of green products in competitive environment and found that price competition can make the greenness of products increase and promote green R&D activities. Hong et al. [24] discussed the design and development of green products in a two-echelon supply chain by taking consumer reference behavior as a reference point, and the results showed that consumers’ green awareness play a positive role on green R&D.

In order to encourage enterprises to improve green technology investment level and promote sustainable economic development, the government can provide green subsidy and standard for enterprises’ technology investment [25,26], which can motivate members and consumers in the supply chain to obtain more benefits and improve their enthusiasm to fulfill social responsibilities [27]. Yang et al. [28] analyzed the impact of government subsidy on technological innovation of competitive enterprises and found that government subsidy can alleviate the prisoner’s dilemma between the two competitive enterprises and improve their profits. Gao et al. [29] assessed the improvement of green R&D technology and how it can continuously improve the environmental benefits of development-intensive green products considering government sets green standards. Xue et al. [30] analyzed the decision making of the green supply chain with energy-saving products, and they found that the government subsidy is positively correlated with the energy-saving level, product price and market demand, which could significantly improve social welfare and promote the improvement of energy-saving products. Li et al. [31] investigated the impact of government subsidy on the innovation level of secondary supply chain, and the results showed that consumer subsidy is more effective than producer subsidy in promoting innovation investment. Ma et al. [22] considered that under government intervention, manufacturers invest in green emission reduction technology to reduce carbon emissions, and retailers invest in information technology to deliver green quality of products to consumers. This study also shows that higher emission reduction subsidy encourages investment in green emission reduction technology and makes all members’ profits increase. Chen et al. [32] researched the impact of government subsidy policies on collaborative innovation in a two-layer supply chain, and found that government subsidy helps improve innovation efficiency. In addition, other scholars discussed the limited government budget and sufficient government budget [33,34], the government’s subsidy scheme for green technology in competitive manufacturing [35], the different channel structure with government subsidy [36], the government’s subsidy to supply chain members through linear subsidy and fixed subsidy [37], how the government allocates special subsidies between consumers and manufacturers [38,39], etc., to subsidize members in supply chain and carry out green R&D and production management.

2. 平台供应链管理

互联网平台为企业和消费者提供了新的沟通方式，为厂商提供了新的营销渠道。电子商务平台的引入可以导致产品市场需求的增加，同时降低销售价格，并帮助制造商和平台获得更多收入[40，41，42]。平台供应链管理已成为学者们研究的重点。平台通过数据分析技术对提高供应链运营效率具有明显效果。例如，平台可以充分发挥数据智能的优势，降低供应链的采购成本[43]，通过挖掘消费者偏好和数据驱动营销（DDM）技术[42，43，44 ]，帮助供应链成员在产品需求增加的基础上获得更多收益，提高供应链成员之间的协调与合作水平[45]和创新水平[46，上述平台供应链论文展示了平台可以通过数据分析技术（如数据驱动营销（DDM）提高市场需求和会员利润的优势。由于平台通常可以为制造商和零售商提供代理销售或转售策略，因此许多学者对会员销售策略选择的问题进行了研究。例如，Xiao等人[48]调查了零售商接受平台数字赋能并加入平台的动机，并提出平台具有每个零售店的运营数据可以有效地帮助零售商选择合适的产品，从而提高其运营效率。郝先生[49]评估了出版业，考虑了产品与设备之间的互补关系，研究了批发和代理定价模式下电子书和电子书阅读器的定价，总结说，由于互补市场（即电子书阅读器）的存在，纯转售模式下电子书的价格较低。Hagiu等人[1]假设供应链成员之间存在信息不对称，并分析了供应商销售模式选择上的营销活动水平问题。代理销售模式和经销商模式依赖于更多有用的信息来优化每个特定产品的定制营销活动。Young[50]研究了第三方消费者的在线评论信息对平台供应链均衡销售策略的影响。Abhishek等人[51]构建了一个制造商和两个平台的供应链模型，分析了代理销售或转售模式选择的正负跨渠道效应和竞争强度等因素。Tan等人[52]通过比较数字产品销售中厂商、平台的利润和代理销售和转售模式的消费者福利，证明了网络市场机制（即代理销售）可以使数字出版业的上游供应商和零售商都受益。Tan等人[53]通过研究数字商品在网络平台上销售时的代理模式和批发模式之间的选择，显示出由于收入分享结构和上游出版商对价格的直接控制，代理模式有利于数字产品的销售。Tian等人[54]考虑了由零售商和平台（如亚马逊平台）组成的平台供应链，并分析了亚马逊何时允许零售商在其平台上销售产品。Zhang等人[55]考虑了制造商在通过在线零售商销售产品时是否增加了线下商店的数量。本文讨论了具有需求信息的在线零售商是否与制造商共享信息，以及制造商选择哪种销售模式（代理销售和转售）。Chen等人[56]发现，转售模式在竞争条件下不再是双赢策略，转售和代理销售模式的混合可以实现帕累托改进。谭[57]分析了基于数字产品产业的数字产品代理模式。耿[58]讨论了上游厂商与下游线上平台之间互动销售模式选择的附加产品定价，发现当平台的服务佣金率不太低且附加产品在市场潜力不太大的条件下，平台会选择代理销售模式。Wei等人[59]考虑了制造商领导者-追随者关系和平台零售商推荐费的综合效应，以帮助制造商选择代理销售或转售模式在电子商务平台上销售产品。从上面的文献综述中，我们可以看到，制造商和平台可能会对有条件差异选择不同的销售策略。然而，在平台供应链的运营过程中，缺乏关于绿色产品研发和销售的论文。

In this background, three questions must be answered: (1) How does the potential market demand of green products, the sensitivities of consumers to green product attributes and data analysis technology affect the levels of the manufacturer’s green technology and the platform’s data-driven marketing, as well as all member’s profits in a platform supply chain system? (2) Which is the best strategy (the agency selling or reselling strategy) that can make higher levels of green technology and data-driven marketing, gaining more profit for all members, and how does the service commission rate affect the manufacturer’s selling strategy choice? (3) Are government subsidies related to green technology conducive to the manufacturer to improve the level of green technology, and is it conducive to all members to obtain more profit, and how does the government subsidy affects the system members’ choice about agency selling or reselling strategy?