This paper aims to find operational decisions and financing strategies in a closed-loop supply chain (CLSC) consisting of a financially constrained manufacturer and a retailer. Based on a benchmark model without financing, three different financing strategies for the capital-constrained manufacturer, bank financing (BF), retailer credit financing (RCF), and hybrid financing (HF), are respectively incorporated and investigated. Analytical results show that: (a) Depending on the initial working capital /and the increased cost of financing from the bank, the manufacturer will change remanufacturing strategy from Partial remanufacturing to Complete remanufacturing for capital constrained CLSC when the relative unit cost of the remanufactured product is moderate; RCF strategy only revises and charges a higher wholesale price of new and remanufactured products; (b) For a financially constrained manufacturer in the CLSC, it holds the prerequisite to implement external financing and a higher financing rate to bank clearly cuts down the profits of the manufacturer and the channel but improves the retailer’s profit under certain conditions; RCF strategy always redistributes the channel profit compared with the non-capital-constrained CLSC; c) A feasible financing rate to the bank of the manufacturer and an appropriate interest rate threshold of the retailer are potentially confirmed.

Purpose: Under the carbon regulation mechanism, managing operational strategies is a challenging task. Green innovation is introduced into a hybrid system of manufacturing and remanufacturing to handle the carbon emission constraints in a dynamic market environment. This paper aims to investigate the joint dynamic green innovation policy and pricing strategies in a hybrid manufacturing and remanufacturing system.Design/methodology/approach: This paper first considers a monopolistic manufacturer who offers brand-new products and remanufactured items at the same price to consumers. Subsequently, the authors extend their analyses to distinct pricing strategies for both newly manufactured products and refurnished ones in such a hybrid system. Two different cases are considered: a loose carbon emission constraint and a binding carbon emission constraint. By solving the dynamic optimization problem, the differential game and Pontryagin’s maximum principle are used to obtain the joint green innovation and pricing strategies.Findings: The retail price first increases then declines over a single period. The green innovation diminishes in the same pricing decision model, while it first increases then declines in a distinct pricing decision model over a single planning horizon. The green innovation investment as well as the retail price are discouraged by an emission cap and recycling fraction. The distinct retail price fluctuates violently, and they are, in descending order of the highest peak price as follows: the newly manufactured product, the same pricing product and the repaired product. Carbon emission caps that are either too high or too low decrease the revenue of the manufacturer. A small emission constraint margin benefits the manufacturer. The recycling policy, as well as other parameters, affects whether the hybrid system attains the carbon emission constraint or not, which suggests that the recycling policy is complementary to the carbon emission constraint mechanism in the hybrid system.Practical implications: These results offer managerial implications to the hybrid system in terms of green innovation, pricing strategies and recycling policy.Originality/value: This paper is among the first papers to research the joint dynamic green innovation policy and pricing strategies with/without a carbon emission constraint in a hybrid manufacturing and remanufacturing system with a differential game. Moreover, this paper presents a potential way of investigating other common resource constraints by a differential game in a manufacturing/remanufacturing system or closed loop supply chain.

Remanufacturing of returned products has been increasingly recognized in industries as an effective approach to face environmental responsibility, government regulations, and increased awareness of consumers. In this paper, we address a closed-loop supply chain (CLSC) in which the manufacturer produces the brand-new products, as well as the remanufactured goods while the retailer sells these products to customers. We consider several different scenarios: the manufacturer and the retailer adopt a steady-state price or a dynamic price with reference quality effects in a centralized case; either, neither or both the manufacturer and the retailer price dynamically with reference quality effects, respectively, in a decentralized model. We solve the problem with the retailer recycling the sold copies and deduce the optimal pricing strategies while the manufacturer in charge of recovering the used items in such a CLSC. The result shows that dynamic pricing strategies are much more profitable for the supply chain and its members when compared with pricing statically; the dynamic pricing strategies with time-varying quality characterized by reference quality are more suited to a long-term and cooperative closed-loop supply chain. Moreover, the optimal recycling fraction relies on the recovery cost coefficient and proves to be uniform despite adopting a dynamic price and quality in all distinct cases.

Purpose: With the rapid growth of the economy, people have increasingly higher living standards, and although people simply pursued material wealth in the past, they now pay more attention to material quality and safety and environmental protection. This paper discusses the lack of motivation for investing in fresh-keeping technology for agricultural products by individual members of an agricultural supply chain composed of a supplier and a retailer by means of mathematical models and data simulations and discuss the optimal price-invest strategies under different sales models.Design/methodology/approach: First, based on the model of no investment by both sides (NN), this paper considers three models: supplier only (MN), retailer only (NR) and cooperative investment (MR). Then, the authors analyze the influence of consumer price sensitivity and freshness sensitivity on the investment motivation of agricultural products under four models. Subsequently, the paper makes a sensitivity analysis of the optimal strategies under several models, and makes a game analysis of the suppliers and retailers of agricultural products. Finally, we conduct an empirical analysis through specific values.Findings: The results show that (a) when the two sides cooperate, the amount of investment is largest, the freshness of the agricultural products is highest, and the sales volume is greatest; however, when both sides do not invest, the freshness of agricultural products and sales volume are lowest. (b) The price and freshness sensitivity of the consumer have an impact on investment decisions. Greater freshness sensitivity corresponds to a higher investment, higher agricultural product price, greater sales volume, and greater supply chain member income and overall income; however, greater price sensitivity corresponds to a lower investment, lower agricultural product price, lower sales volume, fewer supply chain members and lower overall income. (c) The investment game between the supplier and retailer is not only related to the sensitivity to price and freshness but also to the coordination coefficients of interest. At the same time, the market position of agricultural products should be considered when making decisions. The market share of agricultural products will affect the final game equilibrium and then affect the final benefit of the supply chain and individual members.Practical implications: These results provide managerial insights for enterprises preparing to invest in agricultural products preservation technology.Originality/value: At present, the main problem is that member enterprises of agricultural supply chains operate based on their own benefits and are resistant to investing alone to improve the freshness of agricultural products. Instead, they would prefer that other members invest so that they may reap the benefits at no cost. Therefore, the enterprises in each node of the agricultural product supply chain are not motivated enough to invest, and competition and game states are observed among them, and such behavior is definitely not conducive to improving the freshness of agricultural products. However, the current research on agricultural products is more about price, quality and greenness, etc., and there are few studies on agricultural investment. Through the establishment of the model, this paper is expected to provide theoretical suggestions for the supply chain enterprises that plan to invest in agricultural products preservation technology.