关键词: 资金约束, 公平关切, 信用支付, 绿色供应链, 策略选择

Abstract: With the rapid development of the economy, environmental pollution has increasingly become a critical issue, prompting the business community to recognize the importance of environmental protection. In response, many enterprises have adopted green marketing strategies to support sustainable development and enhance their public image. For instance, Yili has launched marketing initiatives such as “Discovering the Green of Expo” to highlight its commitment to environmental stewardship. However, green marketing often involves substantial costs and limited scale effects, which can impose considerable financial pressure on small and medium-sized enterprises (SME), frequently resulting in funding shortages. To address these financial challenges, trade credit strategy presents a new financing model for these enterprises. Additionally, the substantial investments and low returns associated with green marketing, combined with the potential for manufacturers to free-ride, make retailers concerned about profit distribution fairness, so as to influence their decision-making.
In view of this, this paper integrates fairness concern into the green supply chain system, considering scenarios where the retailer faces financial constraints. Using Stackelberg game theory, we develop a green marketing model that accounts for the retailer's fairness concern, examining optimal decisions for channel members. We explore the conditions under which the retailer implements green marketing, and the impact of his fairness concern on decisions. Furthermore, we analyze the manufacturer's strategy of not offering trade credit (bank financing), comparing it with the trade credit strategy, and investigate the interaction between the retailer's green marketing strategy and the manufacturer's trade credit strategy.
The research is organized as follows: First, we construct four models based on whether the retailer has capital constraints and whether green marketing is implemented. Second, we extend the research to scenarios where the manufacturer does not provide trade credit, discussing the interaction between the retailer's green marketing strategy and the manufacturer's trade credit strategy. Finally, we numerically explore the influence of interest rate on the optimal solution.
The research findings are as follows: (1)When the manufacturer offers trade credit, the retailer's fairness concern will reduce the level of green marketing and the manufacturer's profit, but the change in the retailer's profit is related to the impact of retail price on demand. (2)When the retailer's fairness concern is weak, it will be preferable for the manufacturer to provide trade credit. (3)There will be a reasonable range of green marketing fixed cost that allows channel members to achieve Pareto improvement when the retailer engages in green marketing. Compared with the situation without capital constraints, the retailer can only afford lower fixed cost for green marketing under capital constraints, and the retailer is less willing to carry out green marketing. More importantly, when the fixed cost of green marketing is relatively high, the manufacturer can incentivize the retailer to carry out green marketing strategy through trade credit strategy. (4)To encourage the retailer to improve the level of green marketing, both banks and manufacturers should reduce the interest rate as much as possible, for the low interest rate is conducive to the improvement of the manufacturer's profit.
In conclusion, this paper systematically examines the strategic choices of channel members considering the retailer's fairness concern. Future research could expand on this by exploring several key areas: (1)This paper assumes that the interest-free period and interest rate are exogenous variables. Future studies could investigate the interest-free period and trade credit interest rate as endogenous variables. (2)Channel members have different attitudes towards risk. It would be beneficial to study green marketing strategies in this context. (3)The issue of green marketing strategy selection in the context of demand information misrepresentation by retailers also deserves further research.

Key words: capital constraint, fairness concern, trade credit, green supply chain, strategy choice