Supply Chain Decisions Considering Heterogeneous Consumer Greenness Preference and Reservation Utilities

This article focuses on how the prices set by supply chains and the product greenness level changes when there exists a difference for consumers in both their greenness preference and their reservation utility for the common product with minimal greenness, based on a two-dimensional model which is built and the market is partitioned into four groups. In this study, the authors use the Stackelberg game model to analyze the decisions of a two-stage supply chain, providing environmentally friendly products affected by a consumer greenness preference which is represented by the willingness-to-pay (WTP) for product greenness. The authors found that manufacturers may lower the product greenness level with the decrease of the valuation of consumer's WTP for product greenness, but he may prefer keeping the same product greenness, he will even improve it, when there is a reduction in reservation utility for the traditional product. Moreover, this article shows that there is different impact for different combinations of both WTP for product greenness and product greenness level (different market segmentations) on price decisions of the manufacturer and retailer. In consideration of the asymmetric information about consumer's utility and willingness to pay between manufacturer and retailer, the authors introduce the bargaining power into the study, and then they conclude that during the different market segmentations, the wholesale price and retail price go down as a retailer strengthens his bargaining power, and increasing sales volume can improve profit to make up for a loss in retail price.