Research on Pricing Decision of Direct Sales Green Supply Chain Based on Consumers’ Valuation

Abstract

Consumer’s valuation of merchandise is an important factor affecting consumer buying behavior. When the consumer’s valuation exceeds the price of product, the consumer generally makes a decision to purchase the product; conversely, when the consumer’s estimate is lower than the price of product, the consumer will usually refuse to buy the product. From the perspective of consumer product valuation, this study assumed that the consumer’s product valuation obeys a uniform distribution, and a novel consumer demand function was proposed. On this basis, we studied enterprises’ pricing decisions in the supply chain of green agricultural products and obtained the equilibrium prices and optimal profits of the enterprises in several different scenarios, including Vertical Nash game model (VNM), firm A Stackelberg game model (FASM), firm B Stackelberg game model (FBSM), and cooperative game model (CM). In addition, the influence of parameters, such as green level, green preference payment coefficient, and green cost on the optimal profit, was discussed based on game theory and numerical simulation analysis. It was found that equilibrium prices always existed in several different scenarios, and when consumer’s green preference payment coefficient was large enough, the optimal profit of firm B was greater than the optimal profit of firm A. Furthermore, in CM, the sum of optimal profit of firm A and optimal profit of firm B is maximum for four scenarios. Finally, in the three competitive scenarios, green level, green preference payment coefficient, and green cost, have a positive or negative effect on the optimal profits of firm A or firm B. The research conclusions of this study provided theoretical support for the decision-making of enterprises and related management departments.