产品责任、责令召回与供应链中的产品质量选择

Product liability, mandatory recall and quality choices in supply chains

基于产品责任和责令召回两种消费者权利保护措施,构建了一个包含消费者权益保护机构、制造商和零售商的动态博弈模型。在制造商承担(由低质量产品对消费者造成伤害而导致的)产品责任的条件下,研究了消费者权益保护机构、制造商和零售商之间策略性互动。进一步,识别了消费者权益保护机构责令制造商全部召回、不召回和局部召回的外生参数条件。基于博弈均衡,考察了产品责任和其他外生因素(如产品召回成本、消费者伤害程度和质量改进效率)对消费者权益保护机构的责令召回决策、制造商的产品质量决策、批发价合同、供应链成员的盈利性和消费者剩余的影响。比较静态结果表明:(1)产品责任不影响消费者权益保护机构的责令召回决策、制造商的产品质量决策、零售商的产品订货决策和供应链成员的盈利性及消费者剩余,但如何影响制造商的批发价决策依赖于制造商的事后期望责任成本和消费者的事后期望损失成本的相对大小(即批发价可以作为制造商与零售商分担事前期望责任成本的中介);(2)是否制造商产品质量的提高导致更高的供应链成员利润和消费者剩余依赖于外生因素(如产品召回成本和消费者伤害程度)的取值区域,从而可为解释"质量与盈利性之间既可以正相关,也可以负相关"这样的实证结果提供一个理论支持。

The main research question of this study is to investigate how a Consumer Rights and Interests Protection Agency(CRIPG)and a manufacturer as the focal firms in a supply chain respond to product harm crises caused by low-quality products.A dynamic game model is built to describe strategic interactions between a CRIPG and a supply chain consisting of an upstream manufacturer and a downstream retailer.The manufacturer sells its product to the retailer via a wholesale price contract.It is assumed that the products made by the manufacturer have two different quality levels:high and low.Before products are sold,the CRIPG,the manufacturer,the retailer and consumers cannot observe the true quality state.However,after products are sold,sales consumers,the CRIPG,and both supply chain members find out whether the true quality state is high or low.We also assume that the low-quality product can cause potential harm to consumers and the manufacturer is liable for compensating consumers’harm.In order to reduce the probability of product harm crisis and protect consumers’rights and interests,the CRIPG regulates the manufacturer by requiring it to recall a fraction of low-quality products sold by the supply chain.The CRIPG’s objective is to maximize consumer surplus and the manufacturer bears all the recall costs.Meanwhile,the manufacturer can choose to make an investment to increase the high-quality probability for the purpose of avoiding too much liability cost.The sequence of the game model is as follows:Firstly,the CRIPG chooses its regulation policy represented by a mandatory fraction of sold low-quality products.Then after observing the CRIPG’s regulation policy,the profit-maximizing manufacturer chooses a quality level and offers a wholesale price to the retailer.Finally,the retailer decides its ordering quantity and sells products to the final market.With this model,we mainly focus on the following two questions:(1)How is the CRIPG’s regulation policy affected by product liability,product recalling costs,consumers’expected harm and quality improvement efficiency?(2)How do the CRIPG’s mandatory recall policies affect the manufacturer’s product quality choice,the contract relationship between the manufacturer and the retailer,supply chain members’profitability and consumer surplus?With the subgame perfect equilibrium,we identify exogenous parameters as conditions under which the CRIPG chooses a full recall policy,a non-recall policy and a partial recall policy.Furthermore,the comparative static results show that(1)Product liability does not affect the CRIPG’s mandatory recall policies,the manufacturer’s product quality choice,the retailer’s product ordering decision,the supply chain members’profitability and the consumer’s surplus.However,how does product liability affect the manufacturer’s wholesale price decision depends on the relative size of the manufacturer’s ex post expected liability cost and the consumer’s ex post expected harm(i.e.the wholesale price can be used as intermediary by the manufacturer to share the ex ante expected liability cost with the retailer);(2)Whether the manufacturer’s product quality improvement raises supply chain members’profitability and consumer’s surplus depends on the regimes where the value exogenous factors(such as the product recall costs and the consumer’s expected harm)are present.