Research On Pricing And Coordination Of E-Commerce Supply Chain Considering Returns And Online Reviews

With the rapid advances of communication networks and logistics,increasing numbers of merchants are selling products through e-platforms,forming a new supply chain operation mode,i.e.,the e-commerce supply chain.Online sales expand the choice and flexibility of purchases,but also lead to higher return rates than offline sales.Therefore,e-platforms have developed online review service functions to increase consumers’ understanding of purchased products.Given the interactivity,authenticity,and visibility of online reviews,consumers show great concern about product reviews.This paper brings consumer returns into games models.Firstly,a decentralized and centralized model without consumer returns is built to analyze the related coefficient on pricing and profits,and compares the two models to find the optimal mode.Then,considering consumer return,calculated the optimal profit of the decentralized and centralized models,and analyzed the impact of the return rate and product information accuracy on pricing,service level,and supply chain node firms’ profits.Considering the pressure of the return cost of the manufacturer,when design the coordination mechanism,the return cost is included in the design of the coordination mechanism.The research shows that the price is positively related to the return rate,and the service level is not related to the return rate,while sales and the profits of supply chain firms are negatively related to the return rate.Returns are more likely to lose system profits of the centralized model,and are not conducive to the manufacturer’s voice in the channel.The “commission joint service cost sharing” and “commission joint return cost sharing” designed for the two models can improve the efficiency of the decentralized model.Considering the interaction between consumers’ return and online review,the supply chain model is designed and the relationship between the two is analyzed,and then the product information accuracy threshold of the supply chain node firm should provide online review.The research shows that after considering online review,the product quality review grade is negatively related to the return rate,which makes the price decrease first and then increase with the increase of the return rate.Only when the product quality review grade is positive and higher than a certain threshold,online reviews can help increase the profit of E-commerce firms.In addition,this paper calculates the threshold for the product information accuracy that supply chain members should choose to provide online reviews.Similarly,the contract of “commission joint return cost + quality improvement effort cost sharing” can achieve a win-win situation between e-commerce supply chain members’ profits and system efficiency.