Abstract:

As an indispensable part of the circular economy， the importance of closed-loop supply chains is self-evident. When closed-loop supply chain members pursue their own economic benefit maximization， it is easy to produce a double marginalization effect， which leads to supply chain profit loss. The deposit return system can bring both motivation and pressure to members， urging them to actively participate in recycling and remanufacturing activities. Under the government’s implementation of the deposit return system for the retail platform， how to establish a unified game model and obtain the optimal strategy for the closed-loop supply chain members and realize the coordination of the closed-loop supply chain has become an important issue.For the competitive closed-loop supply chains of deposit return retail platform， a noncooperative-cooperative biform game approach is adopted to study and analyze the problem of pricing and profit allocation among the competitive closed-loop supply chains， ensuring that the closed-loop supply chains can be coordinated under profit maximization decisions. Firstly， the competitive and cooperative relationship between the two closed-loop supply chains is analyzed for two inter-chain competitive closed-loop supply chains consisting of manufacturer and retail platform， and manufacturer and recycler respectively. Then， a noncooperative-cooperative biform game model is constructed for pricing and profit allocation in the inter-chain competitive closed-loop supply chains that deposit return retail platform， and a model solution method integrating Shapley value， Nash equilibrium and Stackelberg game is proposed to obtain both benefit maximization strategy and cooperative profit allocation. Finally， a static comparative numerical analysis is carried out， with influencing factors including deposit， substitution factor， difficulty of recovery and cost of recovery.The results of the study show that in the inter-chain competitive closed-loop supply chain， the government’s implementation of the deposit return system on the retail platform recycling channel can effectively improve the enthusiasm of the retail platform to recover used products， but it needs to set a reasonable deposit， otherwise it will damage the supply chain profits； the； Substitution coefficient has positive effects on pricing and profit allocation in inter-chain competitive closed-loop supply chains， while the difficulty and cost of recovery can seriously affect the incentive of recovery for members of inter-chain competitive closed-loop supply chains； The manufacturer’s remanufacturing cost advantage is conducive to closed-loop supply chain members actively participating in recycling activities， increasing profits， promoting green production development and environmental protection. The research results provide theoretical and methodological support and practical reference for competition and cooperation in closed-loop inter-chain competitive supply chains.

Key words: closed-loop supply chain, supply chain competition, deposit refund system, profit allocation, noncooperative-cooperative biform game