Green Co-Creation Strategies among Supply Chain Partners: A Value Co-Creation Perspective

In response to the global fight against environmental deterioration and resource shortage, many governments call on firms to implement green innovation strategies. However, for most small and medium-sized firms, the high cost of green innovation makes it difficult to achieve green goals, causing the need for a growing number of firms to cooperate with their supply chain partners on green innovations. Thus, this study explores, from a value co-creation perspective, how supply chain partners share the investment in, and benefits of, green innovation, assuring their long-term cooperation. Based on a three-level manufacturing supply chain, this paper proposes three different types of green co-creation strategies (i.e., the manufacturer and its supplier, the manufacturer and its competitor, the manufacturer and its retailer). We set the mechanism of co-creation to share the cost of green investment and consider the impact of co-creation on the sales of supply chain partners. Then, by constructing the value functions of three co-creation strategies and proving the concavity of these functions, the findings indicate that different co-creation strategies can indeed improve the firm’s profit in a certain range and achieve a different maximum value in a certain green investment sharing point. This study enriches the literature on green co-creation in supply chains by combing green investment sharing strategies among supply chain partners with value co-creation. In addition, this study provides manufacturers with guidelines on how to share green costs and choose a green co-creation strategy in different operational environments.