Blockchain adoption and channel selection strategies in a competitive remanufacturing supply chain

Abstract

Environmental protection and economic benefits have attracted original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) and third-party remanufacturers (TPRs) enter into the remanufacturing industry. Considering that consumers have a low willingness to pay for remanufactured products, OEMs tend to apply blockchain technology to disclose more product information to consumers to improve their purchase intention. Along this line, we investigate a supply chain consisting of an OEM, a TPR and a retailer, and examine four models depending on whether the OEM adopts blockchain technology or not, and whether the OEM sells products directly to consumers (direct channel) or indirectly by the retailer (retail channel). In this paper, a Stackelberg game is formulated to obtain the optimal strategies for blockchain technology adoption and distribution channel selection. Analytical results show that the OEM should adopt blockchain technology only when consumers’ value discount for remanufactured products produced by the OEM is high and the unit cost of adopting blockchain technology is not high under both direct and retail channels. In specific situation, the direct channel is always advantageous to the OEM whether or not blockchain technology is adopted. In addition, when consumers’ value discount for remanufactured products is not low and the unit cost of adopting blockchain technology is not high, blockchain technology adoption is beneficial to the environment under both direct and retail channels.