Empirical Research On Practice And Restrictive Factors Of Retailer-led Green Supply Chain Management

At present, environmental problems have become increasingly prominent and environmental regulation has become more and more severe, so all kinds of enterprises have to improve its economic performance and social performance, which requires enterprises enhance the environmental management capacity and efficiency of their own and related member enterprises of supply chain in order to gain competitive advantage. Obviously, the implementation of green supply chain management can help enterprises achieve this significant goal.Domestic and foreign studies have shown that the success of green supply chain management requires the core enterprise have a stronger ability of lead, maintain and coordinate the stability of the whole supply chain relationship to ensure the realization of the goal of green supply chain management. Currently, with the call of the global sustainable development, consumers paid sustained attention to their own health, which create a certain scale of green consumption market. The growing powerful retailers which are most close to consumers begin to internalize their environmental pressure, which actively practice the green supply chain management to deal with the environmental pressure to meet consumers’green consumption demand. Therefore, it is inevitable and possible for the green supply chain management from the original manufacturer-led changing to retailer-led. Based on this background, this article first explores the significance for the retailer being as the core enterprise to lead the green supply chain management, then analyzes empirically the present practice situation and restricting factors of the retailer-led green supply chain management and their influential relationships in order to get useful conclusions to guide the retailer’s practice and make it practical impetus be improved, at the same time provide a useful complementary and necessarily expansion to the green supply chain management theory. In this paper, the research results are summarized as follows:1. Extracting3main factors of RLGSCM practice and5main factors of RLGSCM restrictive factors through factor analysis approach.Firstly,3main factors of RLGSCM practice are extracted, which are "green procurement management","internal green management" and "green marketing management". Among them, green procurement management makes the greatest contribution, which is the most important factor, but the retailer practice level was minimum; consumer-oriented green marketing is a relatively smaller role, but its practice effect was best. A further secondary-factors analysis found that the mean values of "actively sell the green products" and" carry out green marketing, advocate green consumption" are higher, which suggested that more retailers had already gained green profits from these green activities.Secondly,5main factors of RLGSCM restrictive factors are extracted, which are "upstream suppliers factors","enterprise own factors","policy factors","downstream consumers factors" and "environmental protection NGO factors". Among them, the impact of "upstream suppliers factors" is the biggest, followed closely is the "retailers’own factors". The "policy factors","environmental protection NGO factors","downstream consumers factors" are as follow, but their percentages are relatively small. Through secondary-factors analysis, we found the5most important obstacles, which are "consumers’ environmental consciousness is not strong","the ability of consumer green pay is not strong","environment friendly product suppliers are lack","suppliers’ environmental cooperation" and "suppliers’in the development of environmentally friendly products the improvement is not enough". Therefore, it is significant for consumers’ green consumption and suppliers’environmental cooperation to promote RLGSCM.2. Analyzing the relationship between RLGSCM practice and RLGSCM restrictive factors through correlation analysis, regression analysis.The conclusions through spearman analysis are as followed:the "green procurement management" practice has a stronger negative correlation with "downstream consumers factors" and "upstream suppliers factors", has a strong negative correlation between "enterprise own factor", and has a general negative correlation with "environmental protection NGO factors"; the "internal green management" practice has a stronger negative correlation with "enterprise own factor", has a strong negative correlation with "upstream suppliers factors","policy factors" and "the downstream consumers factors", and has a general negative correlation with "environmental protection NGO factors"; the "green marketing management" practice has a stronger negative correlation with "downstream consumers factors", has a strong negative correlation with "upstream suppliers factors","enterprise own factor" and "policy factors", and has a general negative correlation with "environmental protection NGO factors".Further study through the regression analysis, conclusions were obtained that the "upstream suppliers factors" has the biggest influence on retailer’s "green procurement management", and the rest are "enterprise own factor","policy factors","downstream consumers factors" and "environmental protection NGO factors"; the "enterprise own factors" is the biggest influence factor on "internal green management", followed by "downstream consumers factors","policy factors","environmental factors" and "environmental protection NGO factors"; the "downstream consumer factors" has the biggest influence on "green marketing management", followed by "enterprise own factors","upstream suppliers factors","policy factors" and "environmental protection NGO factors ".3. Constructing a RLGSCM motive mechanismIn order to promote retailers to overcome obstacles, this paper constructs a RLGSCM motive mechanism, expecting to promote the implementation of green supply chain management from multiple perspectives. The motive system includes:retailer’ own power; government impetus; consumers pulling power; suppliers pushing power; environmental protection NGO impetus.4. Putting forward the benefits of the cooperation between the retailer and suppliers, and the necessity of conducting supervision and inspection to the suppliers’ green behaviors through constructing game model.(1) Building a cooperation game between retailer and its supplier based on knowledge spillover effect. By equilibrium analysis, I found that the cooperative profits were higher than uncooperative profits for both sides. Therefore, only cooperation can make retailer and other member enterprises obtain the biggest economic performance, which asks retailer play a leading role, promote knowledge flow in the supply chain and expand the knowledge spillover effect. Retailer should:survey consumers’ green demand, increase R&D investment and improve their own technical knowledge; promote member enterprises form a learning organization culture; promote member enterprises build a correct moral concept and cooperative concept; create a good communication environment to promote the cooperation and exchange between member enterprises.(2) Building a game model between retailer and its supplier based on supplier’s real green behavior, then carrying a equilibrium analysis. The main conclusion includes:retailer’s examination possibility is mainly affected by the fine, supplier’s gains from green behavior and the cost difference of supplier’s green behavior and non green behavior. Among them, the cost difference is bigger, the possibility of the supplier’s opportunism behavior is higher, so the retailer should strengthen inspection. In addition, the retailer can reduce the possibility of necessary inspection through improving green product’s price or increasing fine; Secondly, the possibility of supplier’s green behavior is mainly affected by the supplier default fine, retailer’s earnings and check cost. The default fine is the only direct control variable for retailer. Therefore, the retailer can increase penalty multiples to reduce the possibility of supplier non green behavior. In short, the retailer should strengthen the supervision and inspection to ensure consumer interests are protected.