考虑绿色制造及企业社会责任行为的零售商自有品牌策略研究

Research on retailer′s store brand strategies considering green manufacturing and corporate social responsibility behavior

本文针对单一制造商和单一零售商构成的绿色供应链,探讨了制造商企业社会责任行为对零售商自有品牌策略的影响。结果表明:(1)随着制造商CSR水平的提升,知名品牌的绿色度和市场需求量将得到提升,而自有品牌的绿色度和市场需求量则会下降;(2)制造商CSR水平的提升能够提高零售商和供应链系统的利润,而且当零售商采取绿色制造策略时,合理的CSR水平还能够改善制造商利润;(3)零售商创建自有品牌会降低知名品牌市场需求量、绿色度和制造商利润,甚至可能损害市场需求总量、供应链系统利润和消费者剩余,而此时制造商可以通过设置较高CSR水平来阻止零售商创建自有品牌,保障自身利润。最后,本文将模型拓展至不同的博弈情形。

In the traditional business model, retailers primarily are responsible for selling the manufacturer′s national brand. However, in recent years, the retailers have been trying to break away from the traditional business model and find new profit growth by creating their store brands, which impacts the manufacturer′s national brand. Therefore, how the manufacturer should deal with the competition, or even prevent the retailer from creating a store brand, has become an issue that needs to be addressed. According to the Triple Bottom Line Theory, companies should concern the criteria from economy, society and environment aspects, thus green manufacturing has received widespread attention from academia and the business community. In addition, as consumers pay more attention to corporate social responsibility(CSR) issues, more and more companies have begun to implement CSR, which has induced non-negligible impacts on upstream and downstream enterprises through the supply chain cooperation. Therefore, we aim to explore whether the manufacturer can deal with the retailer′s store brand competition by implementing CSR behavior. In this context, the study on the impacts of a manufacturer′s CSR behavior on a retailer′s store brand strategies in a green supply chain is of great practical significance.In this paper, a two-echelon green supply chain consisting of a single manufacturer and a single retailer is proposed to explore the impacts of manufacturer′s CSR behavior on retailer′s different store brand strategies(i.e., traditional manufacturing strategy and green manufacturing strategy) through game theory. The specific research processes and the conclusions are shown as follows: First, we obtain an equilibrium solution through the Stackelberg Game(where the manufacturer is the leader and the retailer is the follower). With the equilibrium solution analyzed, the results show that:(1)The higher the manufacturer′s CSR level is, the higher the greenness and market demand of national brand revealed, and the lower the greenness and market demand of store brand is;(2)As the manufacturer′s CSR level increases, the profits of the retailer and the green supply chain system improve, and it does not necessarily decrease manufacturer′s profits when the retailer adopts green manufacturing strategy;(3)The retailer′s store brand strategies hurt the manufacturer′s profits and even hurt the green supply chain system′s profits by reducing the market demand;(4)No matter what kind of store brand strategies the retailer adopts, the manufacturer can prevent the retailer from creating a store brand through implementing a higher level of CSR behavior. Under certain conditions, the manufacturer′s actions to prevent the retailer from creating a store brand can improve its profits and achieve a win-win situation for channel members. However, compared to the traditional manufacturing strategy, if the retailer adopts the green manufacturing strategy, the manufacturer has to implement a higher level of CSR behavior to prevent the retailer from creating a store brand.Second, we extend the study to the impact of the manufacturer′s CSR behavior on the retailer′s store brand strategies where the manufacturer is the leader of the green supply chain. The results show that: compared to the situation where the retailer is the leader of the green supply chain, if the manufacturer is the leader, then the manufacturer′s more substantial channel power will make it necessary to implement a higher level of CSR behavior to prevent the retailer from creating a store brand, which makes it more difficult for the manufacturer to prevent the retailer from creating a store brand. Finally, we explore the situation that the manufacturer cannot adjust green R&D investment to deal with the retailer′s store brand competition. The results show that when the retailer creates a store brand and manufacturer is unable to adjust its green R&D investment in time, the manufacturer needs to implement a higher level of CSR behavior to s prevent the retailer from creating a store brand.This article systematically explores the impact of a manufacturer′s CSR behavior on a retailer′s store brand strategies in the context of the green supply chain. It provides a reference for how the manufacturer deals with the competition of the retailer′s store brand.