The effect of greenness- and price-based competition on a product's environmental performance

Abstract

This study considers two retailers that offer substitutable products and compete in a greenness- and price-sensitive market. The retailers rely on supply chains that have different costs, replenishment times and carbon intensities. The demand is stochastic, and the inventory replenishment time is also stochastic. Each retailer decides the greenness of its product (carbon intensity), the price and the order size to maximize its expected profit under a service level constraint. The mean demand for each retailer decreases in its price and carbon intensity and increases in other retailer's price and carbon intensity. The customers' switchovers are, thus, governed by disparities in carbon intensity and price. The retailers may have different market powers since the total demand is not necessarily equally shared between them when they offer the same price and greenness level. We derive analytically the best response of each retailer to other retailer's decisions at the Nash equilibrium. We determine the market conditions that lead the competing retailer to offering a greener or a dirtier product than the product it would have offered in a monopolistic situation. We explain how the retailer's market power impacts on its greenness strategy under different market conditions. We also investigate insights into the impact of disparities in transportation carbon emissions, the order size decisions, and the retailers' optimal profit under the different competition scenarios.