Research on Multi-Period Closed-Loop Supply Chain Network Equilibrium Based on Consumers' Preference for Products

Introduction

At present, there is a contradiction between the demand for resources and the exhaustion of resources. Based on this contradiction, the United States has established a 3R system from the perspective of sustainable development (reuse, recycle, and remanufacturer). It can be said that the remanufacturing industry can effectively promote the utilization of resources and effectively alleviate the contradiction between resources and human needs (Govindan, Soleimani, & Kannan, 2015; Qiang, 2015). Remanufacturing is the process of high-tech repair and remanufacturing of end of life (EOL) products. Its industrial philosophy is savings and green (Morana & Seuring, 2007; Yi, Huang, Guo, & Shi, 2016).

Based on the rise of the concept of remanufacturing, closed-loop supply chain management came into being (Hammond & Beullens, 2007; Wang et al., 2019). The closed-loop supply chain combines forward logistics and reverses logistics to achieve the process of “resource-production-consumption-collecting-production.” At present, scholars' research on closed-loop supply chain is divided into two categories, including simple closed-loop supply chain (one-to-one, one-to-many, many-to-one) and complex closed-loop supply chain network (CLSCN) (Nagurney, Dong, & Zhang, 2002; Hammond & Beullens, 2007; Katiraee, Shirazi, & Fazlollahtabar, 2017; Zhang & Yang, 2018), that is, many-to-many. There is not only one company in the supply chain, but there are often multiple members in the same layer (Nagurney et al., 2002; Wang et al., 2019). They compete and cooperate, for example, companies that produce the same or similar products (Dell and Lenovo). Consumers of the same or similar needs (US and Japanese consumers). Also, in a complex CLSCN, the behavior of corporate is often a long-term behavior, so studying a multi-period CLSCN is more practical (Allevi, Gnudi, Konnov, & Oggioni, 2018).

In addition, as green and remanufacturing ideas gradually enter the minds of consumers, consumers together with governments and enterprises join the remanufacturing industry, and consumers are beginning to shift their focus to remanufactured products (Matsumoto, Chinen, & Endo, 2018). In the process of purchasing products, consumers can not only purchase new products but also remanufactured products (Ferrer & Swaminathan, 2010). Consumers have individual preferences for the two products. Consumers’ preference for products is the degree of consumers’ preference for product personalization, which largely determines the demand for the products in the market and affects the profits of the enterprises (Zhang & Wang, 2019). According to the results of the Duan et al.'s (2019) survey, consumers are now more inclined to remanufactured products, and even more than 42% of respondents considered the environmental protection degree of their products when making purchasing decisions. Therefore, enterprises should not only pay attention to the production behavior of remanufactured products but also pay more attention to consumers' preferences for new products and remanufactured products.