Optimal timing of acquisition price announcement for used products in a dual-recycling channel reverse supply chain

The rapid development of information technologies enables recycling companies to purchase and collect used products from consumers through both traditional and Internet-based online channels. Because an online channel transmits price information instantly to consumers, choosing the best time to announce the recycling price (i.e., acquisition price) of used products to consumers has become a critical problem for recycling companies. This paper seeks to solve this problem by developing a game-theoretic model describing a dual-channel reverse supply chain consisting of a recycling company and a third-party collector in which the recycling company purchases products not only through a third-party collector, but also directly from consumers online. We derive two major results by solving the model. The first is that first-mover advantage arises, which indicates that each firm constituting a dual-channel reverse supply chain should announce its own recycling price before the other. This first result is notable because it is exactly opposite to conventional wisdom that the second-mover advantage of pricing usually emerges when price competition occurs among firms in a horizontal relationship, which is well known in noncooperative game theory. The second result is that the recycling company can maximize its own profit and consumers' surplus by announcing its recycling price in the online channel before or upon, but not after, determining the transfer price paid to the collector for products collected in the offline channel. Both results can be used as practical decision-making guidelines in dual-recycling channel reverse supply chain management.