Retailers’ incentives for green investment in differentiated competition channels

Abstract

With increasing public environmental awareness, green activities in retail and distribution processes have become crucial tools for retailers to boost demand and enhance competitiveness. This study develops an analytical model to study the green investment choices of two differentiated retailers dealing with a common green manufacturer. It also explores the impacts of these investment choices on the manufacturer's operational decisions, channel efficiency, consumer welfare, and the environment. We derive three main results. First, the powerful retailer always favors green investments, whereas the less powerful (inferior) retailer may either prefer or avoid green investments. The fiercer the inter-retailer competition, the lower the willingness of the inferior retailer to introduce green investments. Second, although all supply chain parties may disagree on their preferences for retailers' green investments, a bilateral green investment (i.e., both retailers make green investments) can reach an incentive alignment for all firms if the differentiation between retailers is low enough and the competition between them is not substantially fierce. Moreover, a bilateral green investment improves consumer welfare and channel efficiency because of the great demand expansion and double marginalization reduction. Third, the retailers' green investments can motivate the manufacturer to produce greener products, but they do not necessarily benefit the environment. We show that the supply chain's economic sustainability aligns with its environmental sustainability only if the environmental improvement efficiency of green investments is substantially high. We further examine the impact of retailers with differentiated green investment abilities and the manufacturer's green investment efficiency to verify the robustness of the main results.