How Does Licensing Remanufacturing Affect the Supply Chain Considering Customer Environmental Awareness?

As sustainability issues are receiving increasing attention in society, in recent years many manufacturers have been adopting remanufacturing via technology licensing. This paper uses a game theory approach to investigate this strategy of a manufacturer under a closed-loop supply chain consisting of one supplier, one manufacturer, and one third-party remanufacturer (TPR), with the consideration of customer environmental awareness. In particular, the supplier supplies the components to the manufacturer and the manufacturer adopts technology licensing remanufacturing via the TPR. We explicitly characterize the reactions between the supplier and the manufacturer as being in equilibrium after adopting the technology licensing. We find that only when remanufacturing is a potential threat to the supplier is the performance of the supply chain improved and the double marginalization effect effectively eliminated. Moreover, remanufacturing by technology licensing only increases the profit of the manufacturer, but decreases the profit of the supplier. Interestingly, contrary to traditional wisdom, the existence of remanufactured products does not reduce the quantity of new products. Furthermore, remanufacturing by technology licensing may not always improve the environment, but customers in the market have environmental awareness that facilitates remanufacturing.