Pricing policies of a competitive dual-channel green supply chain

This study examines a dual-channel supply chain in which the manufacturer makes green products for the environmental conscious. We discuss the pricing and greening strategies for the chain members in both centralized and decentralized cases using the Stackelberg game model under a consistent pricing strategy. Furthermore, we compare the results of the single channel and dual-channel supply chains. We obtain that when the greening cost is greater than a threshold, the manufacturer does not open direct channel. However, when the degree of customer loyalty to the retail channel and the greening cost satisfy certain conditions, the dual-channel green supply chain does exist. Interestingly, we find that the retail price in the centralized green supply chain is higher than that in the decentralized supply chain, which contrasts with the result of 'double marginalization'. We also propose a contract to coordinate the decentralized dual-channel green supply chain. Finally, extensions of consistent pricing strategy are discussed and different results are achieved. Our main contributions are that we introduce e-commerce into green supply chain management and obtain pricing and greening strategies for chain members. (C) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.