Agency, Reselling, or Hybrid: Strategic Channel Selection in a Green Supply Chain

Yumin Fu, Jianyun Wu, Cheng Ma () and Xiaoyu Fu
Additional contact information
Yumin Fu: School of Business, Qingdao University, Qingdao 266071, China
Jianyun Wu: School of Business, Qingdao University, Qingdao 266071, China
Cheng Ma: School of Business, Qingdao University, Qingdao 266071, China
Xiaoyu Fu: College of Traditional Chinese Medicine, Shandong University of Traditional Chinese Medicine, Jinan 250355, China

Sustainability, 2023, vol. 15, issue 3, 1-21

Abstract: This study explores the channel preference of a platform and a green manufacturer in an online market. The platform offers both the agency channel and the reselling channel, while the manufacturer designs a green product to improve the green effort and sells it through the platform. We find that the manufacturer’s channel preference is determined by the interaction of the green investment, the commission rate, and the competition intensity. In contrast, the online platform prefers the hybrid channel when both the commission rate and green investment inefficiency are moderate but prefers the agency channel otherwise. Interestingly, the manufacturer can change its sales center between the reselling channel and the agency channel, thus resulting in a win–win outcome for the manufacturer and the platform by selecting the hybrid channel. This study reveals the benefits of green product selling in an online market and provides useful guidelines for green product manufacturers and platform managers in improving their strategic selling channel.

Keywords: channel structure; online platform; green investment; competition (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: O13 Q Q0 Q2 Q3 Q5 Q56 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2023
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/15/3/2016/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/15/3/2016/ (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:gam:jsusta:v:15:y:2023:i:3:p:2016-:d:1042755

Access Statistics for this article

Sustainability is currently edited by Ms. Alexandra Wu

More articles in Sustainability from MDPI
Bibliographic data for series maintained by MDPI Indexing Manager ().