Abstract: With the rapid development of green economy, more and more supply chain companies have begun to expand their original production lines to develop more environmentally friendly substitutable products. In the supply chain, price, low-carbon quality level, and service effort of products are the key factors that affect consumers' purchasing decision, as well as the key factors that affect corporate profits. Recently, there are many literatures which focus on competition in the green supply chain. However, the influence of the triple competitive factors (quality, price and service) for substitutable products in a green supply chain has not yet been investigated in the literature. In fact, the relevant decisions of traditional products will affect the company's decisions on substitutable products. Therefore, the impact of the triple competitive factors (quality, price and service) among substitutable products on green supply chain decisions is investigated, and the optimal retail price, quality and service of newly launched green products are determined in different scenarios. Based on game theory, a quality-pricing-service decision model with manufacturers and retailers is built to maximize profits. The reverse induction method is used to solve the game equilibrium problem of the green supply chain in three modes: (1) centralized decision-making scenario; (2) Nash game decision-making scenario; (3) Manufacturer-led Stackelberg game decision-making scenario. Through theoretical analysis and numerical experiment comparison, the influence of the degree of triple competition on the balance decision of supply chain system is analyzed. It is found that in the case of substitutable products, the more intense the competition for product quality and service, the lower the equilibrium price. Increased price competition does not always improve the quality of green products, but it can improve service levels. And from the simulation results, it can be seen that the supply chain profit under the influence of multiple factors is more complicated than that of a single factor. These conclusions expand the scope of application of the conclusions that “the degree of competition of non-price factors affects product prices” and “the degree of competition of prices affects decision-making on non-price factors”, and at the same time provide a basis for supply chain members to make decisions.

Key words: green supply chain; substitutable products; triple competition; game theory