关键词: 闭环供应链, 二手产品, 参考价格效应, 旧货市场, 电商平台

Abstract: As consumers' environmental awareness continues to grow, many companies are recognizing the value of recycling waste products and selling second-hand products. These practices not only promote sustainability but also offer economic benefits for businesses.The rapid development of e-commerce has led to the emergence of recycling businesses on many e-commerce platforms. Some of the old products that are recovered are remanufactured by manufacturers, while others are sold directly by the e-commerce platforms as second-hand products.In addition, price is no longer the only criterion that affects consumers' purchase decisions, and consumers often have reference price behaviors because of psychological prices. Therefore, enterprises should be fully aware of the impact of reference price effects on consumers' purchasing decisions, and take it into operation decisions scientifically and rationally. Currently, existing literature on closed-loop supply chains often ignores the impact of consumer reference price effects. Moreover, the literature on the reference price effect does not consider the impact of the reference price effect on second-hand product sales decisions. Therefore, different from the existing literature, this study investigates the optimal decision-making problem of closed-loop supply chain members under the unopened and opened second-hand market of the e-commerce platform, and considers the impact of reference price effects on decision-making, which has some theoretical and practical implications.
Consider an E-closed-loop supply chain structure where the manufacturer entrusts the e-commerce platform to sell new products and recycle used products. When the e-commerce platform does not open up the second-hand market, it will transfer all the recycled used products to the manufacturer for remanufacturing. When the e-commerce platform opens up the second-hand market, it sells both the new and second-hand products to consumers. The manufacturer does not need to pay related fees for second-hand products sold in the second-hand market, and the e-commerce platform is responsible for its own profits and losses in the second-hand market. Three scenarios are considered in this paper: (1)E-closed-loop supply chain model without opening up the second-hand market (Model A); (2)E-closed-loop supply chain model with opening up the second-hand market(Model B); and (3)E-closed-loop supply chain model considering the reference price effect (Model C).In the above three scenarios, we construct and solve the Stackelberg game model with the e-commerce platform as the leader and the manufacturer as the follower. Then, we analyze the equilibrium results analytically and numerically, and obtain the following important conclusions:
(1)For consumers, the e-commerce platform opens up the second-hand market to break the monopoly of the manufacturer on the market. Thus, competition between the new and second-hand products results in lower sales prices for the new products and higher recycling prices for the old products, both of which benefit consumers.In addition, the reference price effect and the enhancement of consumers' preference for second-hand products can further increase the recycling price of old products and reduce the sales price of new products. This increases the consumer's utility for returning the old product and purchasing a new one.
(2)For the manufacturer, the e-commerce platform opening up the second-hand market is a threat to it. As a result, the manufacturer has to raise the recycling price of old products and lower the sales price of new products to cope with the competition between new and second-hand products in the market. Although the price adjustment will increase the recycling of old products and improve the sales of new products, the profit of the manufacturer will still be lower. In addition, the enhanced consumer reference price effect and preference for second-hand products will lead the e-commerce platform to increase advertising levels and recycle more old products. But this will also lead to lower sales of new products and lower profits for the manufacturer.
(3)For the e-commerce platform, opening up a second-hand market makes it no longer rely solely on commission fees to obtain profits. This is because by pricing second-hand products, the e-commerce platform can control the market to a certain extent and establish a cooperative and competitive relationship with the manufacturer. The opening up of the second-hand market by the e-commerce platform means that it has obtained a new way to make money, which has greatly increased its profits.In addition, the consumer reference price effect and the enhancement of second-hand product preference can make the e-commerce platform sell more second-hand products. Thereby increasing the advertising level of recycling of old products and recycling more old products. This will further increase the profit of the e-commerce platform.
There are still some limitations in this paper. First, this paper only considers one manufacturer and one e-commerce platform. Therefore, the supply chain system composed of multiple manufacturers and multiple e-commerce platforms can be used as a future research object.In addition, this paper only studies a single-period game model. Therefore, the multi-period dynamic pricing strategy of the closed-loop supply chain can be studied in the future.

Key words: closed-loop supply chain, second-hand products, reference prices effects, flea market, e-commerce platform