This paper integrates the Internet service platform with big-data marketing into the dynamic closed-loop supply chain system as an independent game subject. Considering the reference price effect of consumers, this work constructs differential games among manufacturer, retailer and Internet service platform under three business models of independent, collaborative production and collaborative marketing. Using Bellman’s continuous dynamic programming theory, this work obtains the optimal feedback strategies of price and big-data marketing effort, brand goodwill, return rate of used products and corporate profits under the three business models. Comparing the three scenarios and analyzing the sensitivity of key exogenous parameters, it can be found that the involvement of Internet service platform has a crucial impact on the sustainable profitability of supply chain enterprises. Considering the reference price effect of consumers, enterprises should adopt different strategic alliances in different periods, which can also gain new development momentum in the context of data-driven marketing, achieve the improvement of the triple-bottom line of closed-loop supply chain and even reach a win-win situation for supply chain enterprises.

In the e-commerce market, many e-commerce platforms act as resellers when selling products, and act as agents when selling other products. In the sales process, e-commerce platforms can either build their own blockchain anti-counterfeit traceability platforms or cooperate with third-party blockchain anti-counterfeit traceability platforms. This will generate four scenarios: 1) reseller, building its own platform (RE); 2) reseller, cooperating with a third-party platform (RO); 3) agent, building its own platform (ME); 4) agent, cooperating with a third-party platform (MO). Therefore, this paper constructs a differential game model under four modes to explore the interaction between the choice of sales mode and the choice of anti-counterfeit traceability service strategy. The results show that suppliers’ profits are influenced by various aspects. On the one hand, in small-scale markets, the situation in which suppliers can realize higher profits evolves from ME to RO as the wholesale price increases, and in large-scale markets, suppliers are more profitable in the ME mode. On the other hand, with the increase of market scale and the decrease of unit price of anti-counterfeit traceability service of third-party platform, the situation that suppliers can achieve higher profit evolves from RE to RO and then to RE. For e-commerce platform, self-built platform is a better choice. In the small-scale market, as the market size increases, the cost performance of anti-counterfeit traceability service decreases, and the best choice for e-commerce platform evolves from resale to agency sales, and in the large-scale market, the best choice for e-commerce platform is resale.

This paper integrates a low-carbon tourism supply chain consisting of a low-carbon tourist attraction (LTA) providing a low-carbon service and an online travel agency (OTA) responsible for big data marketing. Consumers may also encounter sudden crisis events that occur in the tourist attraction during their visit, and the occurrence of crisis events can damage the low-carbon goodwill of the tourist attraction to the detriment of the sustainable development of the supply chain. Therefore, this paper aims to investigate how tourism firms can develop dynamic strategies in the pre-crisis environment if they envision the occurrence of a crisis event and how crisis events affect interfirm cooperation. This paper uses stochastic jump processes to portray the dynamic evolution of low-carbon goodwill in the context of crisis events and introduces the methods of the differential game and Bellman’s continuous dynamic programming theory to study the sustainable operations of low-carbon tourism supply chains. Our findings provide important managerial insights for enterprises in the tourism supply chain and suggest that they need to not only become aware of the tourist attraction crisis events, but also, more importantly, they need to adjust their appropriate input strategies based on the degree of anticipation of the crisis.

This paper analytically explores the value of blockchain technology in building consumer trust in recyclers. We focus on an e-commerce closed-loop supply chain composed of an online platform and a manufacturer. In the forward chain, the platform selects a reselling or marketplace model to sell products. In the reverse chain, the platform collects used products, and the unknown whereabouts of the used products will cause consumer mistrust and be detrimental to the corporate image. Blockchain technology can address these challenges by improving the visibility of the recycling chain. By constructing differential game models, we specify the conditions for blockchain implementation and explore its impact on the online sales model choice and the E-CLSC performance. The findings show that the manufacturer consistently benefits from blockchain technology, while the platform decides to adopt it when the long-term profits outweigh the initial investment costs. Interestingly, the sales model selection will not change with the advent of blockchain technology. We further show the benefits of blockchain-enabled recycling and provide tangible insights for related practitioners.