Sustainable Supply Chain Decisions under E-Commerce Platform Marketplace with Competition

Abstract

Motivated by the industrial observation that the e-commerce platform marketplaces (e.g., Amazon) are increasingly launching sustainable strategies, this study aims to build an analytical framework to guide managers on making sustainable decisions. This study builds a stylized game-theoretical model in the sustainable supply chain context, where the competitive traditional product manufacturers sell their products through the platform’s marketplace, while the platform decides whether to introduce the green products and the pricing strategy. We find that, when the evaluation difference for the green product is sufficiently low, the introduction of the green product by the platform benefits the manufacturers (or third-party sellers). Interestingly, a higher platform fee makes a higher likelihood of a win-win situation between the platform and manufacturers. Moreover, when consumers value green products sufficiently higher than traditional products, the traditional products’ manufacturers can also benefit from the green product entry.