Analyzing the performance of a two-period remanufacturing supply chain with dual collecting channels

Collecting channel of used products, dynamic nature of product's life-cycle and firm's profit discount over the time are remanufacturer's key concerns to make decisions. This paper studies a remanufacturing supply chain with dual collecting channels under dynamic setting and establishes three two-period game models by considering both the profit discount and competition between two collecting channels. We analyze the effects of profit discount and collection competition on firms' pricing decisions, collection rates and profits, and reveal the remanufacturer's optimal strategies of maximizing its profit or of maximizing the collection rate. Analysis and comparison of the model solutions are performed through analytical approach and numerical studies. Some new insights are as follows: (1) The profit discount has no effect on the optimal retail/wholesale prices for the second period and only affects the optimal decisions for the first period. (2) As the profit discount increases, the remanufacturer's profit increases very rapidly regardless of the remanufacturer's options for collecting used products. (3) The retailer and the third party will make the same optimal collection rate when they jointly collect used products, which means the collection competition does not generate differences on their individual optimal collection rates.