Feng Yang, Pei Hu, Fuguo Zhao and Cuihua Hu
The purposes of this paper is to propose a customer returns model in a dual-channel supply chain where a customer can return the purchased product to the retailer or the…
Abstract
Purpose
The purposes of this paper is to propose a customer returns model in a dual-channel supply chain where a customer can return the purchased product to the retailer or the manufacturer and obtain an equilibrium of selling prices and refund prices and the optimal profit when considering customer returns in the centralized and decentralized dual-channel supply chain.
Design/methodology/approach
This paper mainly uses the game theory technique to analyze the problem. The manufacturer and the retailer are vertically integrated in the traditional channel, and the results of the centralized dual-channel supply chain are obtained. Then, the Stackelberg game was adopted to analyze the decentralized dual-channel supply chain. Finally, the detailed numerical simulation is proposed to obtain straight-forward insights for the industrial managers.
Findings
The mathematic analysis used shows that the main findings of this paper are: in the centralized scenario, the retailer and the manufacturer will charge higher selling prices when they offer return policy, and the demand for each channel increases, which results in higher profit; and the price and refund price of the direct channel in the centralized and decentralized dual-channel are the same, respectively.
Originality/value
Most previous literatures highlight that return policy plays an important role in supply chain which considering one channel. But there is no study on the customer return policy in dual-channel supply chain. This paper is a further step to model the effects of customer returns policy on the pricing policy and optimize the profits in a dual-channel supply chain. This paper analyzes the pricing and refund strategies and gets an equilibrium in the centralized and decentralized dual-channel supply chain scenarios.
Details
Keywords
Qilan Li, Zhiya Zuo, Yang Zhang and Xi Wang
Since the opening of China (aka, reform and opening-up), a great number of rural residents have migrated to large cities in the past 40 years. Such a one-way population inflow to…
Abstract
Purpose
Since the opening of China (aka, reform and opening-up), a great number of rural residents have migrated to large cities in the past 40 years. Such a one-way population inflow to urban areas introduces nontrivial social conflicts between urban natives and migrant workers. This study aims to investigate the most discussed topics about migrant workers on Sina Weibo along with the corresponding sentiment divergence.
Design/methodology/approach
An exploratory-descriptive-explanatory research methodology is employed. The study explores the main topics on migrant workers discussed in social media via manual annotation. Subsequently, guided LDA, a semi-supervised topic modeling approach, is applied to describe the overall topical landscape. Finally, the authors verify their theoretical predictions with respect to the sentiment divergence pattern for each topic, using regression analysis.
Findings
The study identifies three most discussed topics on migrant workers, namely wage default, employment support and urban/rural development. The regression analysis reveals different diffusion patterns contingent on the nature of each topic. In particular, this study finds a positive association between urban/rural development and the sentiment divergence, while wage default exhibits an opposite relationship with sentiment divergence.
Originality/value
The authors combine unique characteristics of social media with well-established theories of social identity and framing, which are applied more to off-line contexts, to study a unique phenomenon of migrant workers in China. From a practical perspective, the results provide implications for the governance of urbanization-related social conflicts.