How manufacturer's integration strategies affect closed-loop supply chain performance

Abstract

This paper considers a manufacturer's optimal integration strategy in a three-level closed-loop supply chain including one manufacturer, one retailer and two competing collectors. We study how the manufacturer's integration strategies of retailing and collecting channels affect the closed-loop supply chain members' optimal decisions and maximum profits, and also investigate the interaction between the collection competition and the manufacturer's integration strategies. Through comparing various integration strategies, some new and interesting management insights are obtained: to improve collection rate of the whole closed-loop supply chain and maximise the surplus profit of integration strategy, the manufacturer's best opt is to integrate the retailer and only one collector when the collection competition is intense.

Keywords:

• Competition
• closed-loop supply chain
• integration

Acknowledgments

The authors wish to express their sincerest thanks to the editors and anonymous referees for their constructive comments and suggestions on the paper. This research was supported in part by National Natural Science Foundation of China (Nos: 71971076,71371186,71801078) and Natural Science Foundation of Hebei Province (No: G2019202344).

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Supplemental data

Supplemental data for this article can be accessed http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/00207543.2020.1762016.

Notes

1 http://www.gerunzs.com/; http://www.rfhs888.com/

2 http://www.reverselogistic.com/apple.consumer/

Additional information

Funding

This research was supported in part by National Natural Science Foundation of China (Nos: 71971076, 71371186, 71801078) and Natural Science Foundation of Hebei Province (No: G2019202344).