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This paper investigates a dual-channel supply chain in which a manufacturer offers coupons in the online channel and the retailer in the offline channel. The optimal pricing and coupon promotion policies are explored, and the brand image under different promotion scenarios is studied.

Three differential game models, namely no coupon is offered, coupons offered by the manufacturer and coupons offered by the retailer, are constructed.

The results show that the manufacturer and retailer intend to conduct coupon promotions under a large coupon redemption rate. Coupon promotion derives a higher price and profit for the issuers, and the manufacturer can free-ride on the retailer's coupon promotion. The retailer's profit in the retailer-promotion scenario may be lower than that in the manufacturer-promotion scenario in some special conditions. Besides, price, coupon face value, brand image and profit increase over time. After multiple cycles game, the operational strategy evolves to an optimal equilibrium status.

This paper provides guidance and advice for dual-channel supply enterprises to implement joint pricing and coupon promotion strategies under multiple sales seasons.

This paper aims to explore optimal pricing policies and characteristics of a two-level dual-channel supply chain under price- and delivery time-sensitive demand. Besides price of the product, the delivery lead time is also a crucial factor in customers’ purchase decisions. A longer delivery lead time would diminish customers’ acceptance and faithfulness on the online channel, while a shorter delivery lead time would lead to incorporation of a substantial amount of logistics costs. In formulation of mathematical model, the effects of delivery lead time on the manufacturer and the retailer’s pricing strategies and profits in cooperative and non-cooperative dual-channel supply chain are explained analytically.

The analytical models are formed for both non-cooperative and cooperative scenarios under inconsistent and consistent pricing. The authors examine whether revenue sharing (RS) contract or delivery cost sharing contract can solely coordinate the dual-channel supply chain. If a single contract fails, then the combination of RS contract with delivery cost sharing to achieve channel coordination is discussed.

It is found that the RS or delivery cost sharing contract cannot coordinate the channel individually but revenue and delivery cost sharing contract jointly coordinate the channel. All analytical results are illustrated numerically, along with sensitivity analysis.

There are many correlated issues that need to be further investigated. First, one good extension to this research may include the consideration of the channel structure with competitive retailers. It will be interesting to analyze the performance of coordination mechanisms by considering the retailer as a Stackelberg leader in retailing.

The findings and subsequent methodological discussions aim to provide practical guidance to retailers who are allowing customers to choose how, when and where they interact and purchase by offering a combination of websites (fully functional and mobile-enabled), catalogs and stores with increasing convergence of channels.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the pricing strategy and the impact of agents' risk preference in a dual-channel supply chain in which both agents are risk-averse.

The authors make use of the mean-variance (MV) method to measure the risk aversion of the agents and apply Stackelberg game to obtain the optimal strategies of the proposed models. Furthermore, the authors compare the optimal strategies with that in the benchmark model in which no agent is risk-averse.

The authors find that the pricing decisions can be divided into four categories according to the risk attitudes of the agents: the decisions that are independent of two agents' risk attitudes, the decisions that depend on only one agent’s risk attitude (i.e. depend on only manufacturer's risk attitude and depend on only retailer's risk attitude) and the decisions that depend on both agents' risk attitudes. In addition, the authors find that the retail price will be lower and the wholesale price in most cases will be lower than that in the benchmark when at least one agent's risk control is effective; the demand will be always increasing as long as one agent's risk control is effective. Furthermore, compared to the benchmark, a win-win strategy (i.e. Pareto improvement) for the supply chain members can be obtained in a certain range where the agents' risk controls are appropriate.

This research provides a theoretical reference for the managers to make the pricing decisions and the risk control in dual-channel supply chains with heterogeneous preference consumers.

This paper aims to analyze the impact of the cost coefficient of product emission reduction, coefficient of low-carbon product advertising effort cost, and sharing ratio of low-carbon product advertising effort cost on the profit of a dual-channel supply chain. After determining the best model and relevant influencing factors, the paper puts forward corresponding management inspirations and suggestions.

The paper opts for an exploratory study using Stackelberg game theory to construct a centralized decision-making (MC mode), a low carbon product advertising effort cost free sharing decentralized decision-making (SD model) and a low carbon product advertising effort cost sharing decentralized decision-making (JD model) game model. Through using optimization methods to get the equilibrium solution, the relevant management suggestions are obtained by comparison analysis.

The paper shows that the JD model is better than the SD model in terms of the profits of the manufacturer, retailer and supply chain, and the improvement of Pareto is realized. The proportion of cost sharing of low carbon product advertising effort is positively related to the wholesale price and direct influence coefficient of low carbon product advertising effort on channel, while negatively related to the retail price and the cross influence coefficient of low carbon product advertising effort on alternative channels. Under the JD model, the manufacturer can reduce advertising costs through improving the efficiency and pertinence of direct channel advertising and urging the retailer to do a better job in sales management to improve gross margin and require the retailer to increase advertising efficiency and pertinence of retail channel to reduce advertising costs of retail channel and other ways to increase their profits. The retailer can make use of its advantages closer with consumers to improve the efficiency and pertinence of advertising in the retail channel to raise the influence coefficient of advertising and reduce the advertising cost in the retail channel.

The innovations of this paper are listed as follows: First, it has considered advertising investment from both the manufacturer and the retailer simultaneously. Second, it has considered a low-carbon background to investigate cooperative advertising decision for low-carbon products. Third, it has considered the decision on the level of product emission reduction and the level of low-carbon product advertising effort investment simultaneously.

The purpose of this paper is an attempt to design a proper incentive coordination mechanism to deal with the channel conflicts between the traditional sales and online direct sales.

With respect to the problems of channel conflicts between the traditional sales and online direct sales, to optimize the sale system and get more profits, considering the influences of consumer network acceptance, the authors establish demand and profit function based on consumer's utility, respectively. What's more, we exploit the game theory to analyze the optional decisions of the supply chain under the incentive coordination condition and no incentive coordination condition, and then we discuss the supply chain's optimal pricing, demand, profit and compensation incentive levels with the different effect of consumer network acceptance.

The level of compensation incentive provided by the manufacturer is influenced by consumer network acceptance and product cost. The lower the consumer network acceptance, the better the compensation incentive coordination effect of manufacturers. Manufacturers, wholesalers, retailers and consumers are all important players in real supply chain relationships. When a manufacturer exists as a dominant role, it should pay full attention to the impact of consumer behavior on supply chain decisions.

The research can clarify the influence and mechanism of consumer behavior on supply chain channel conflict coordination, and deal with channel conflicts.

The proposed incentive coordination can effectively realize supply chain channel conflict resolution, and provide decision-making ideas and methods for manufacturers to develop the supply chain management of online direct sales channels.

This study aims to explore the gap between research and practice on supply chain risks due to COVID-19 by exploring the changes in global emphasis on supply chain risk research.

This work designed a research framework to compare the research of supply chain risks before and during the COVID-19 pandemic based on machining learning and text clustering and using the relevant publications of the web of science database.

The results show that scholars' attention to supply chain crisis has increased in the wake of the COVID-19 outbreak, but there are differences among countries. The United Kingdom, India, Australia, the USA and Italy have greatly increased their emphasis on risk research, while the supply chain risk research growth rate in other countries, including China, has been lower than the global level. Compared with the pre-pandemic period, the research of business finance, telecommunications, agricultural economics policy, business and public environmental occupational health increased significantly during the pandemic. The hotspots of supply chain risk research have changed significantly during the pandemic, focusing on routing problem, organizational performance, food supply chain, dual-channel supply chain, resilient supplier selection, medical service and machine learning.

This study has limitations in using a single database.

This work compared the changes in global and various countries' supply chain risk research before and during the pandemic. On the one hand, it helps to judge the degree of response of scholars to the global supply chain risk brought about by COVID-19. On the other hand, it is beneficial for supply chain practitioners and policymakers to gain an in-depth understanding of the relationship between the COVID-19 pandemic and supply chain risk, which might provide insights into not only addressing the supply chain risk but also the recovery of the supply chain.

The initial exploration of the changing extent of supply chain risk research in the context of COVID-19 provided in this paper is a unique and earlier attempt that extends the findings of the existing literature. Secondly, this research provides a feasible analysis strategy for supply chain risk research, which provides a direction and paradigm for exploring more effective supply chain research to meet the challenges of COVID-19.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the impact of price adjustment speed on the stability of Bertrand–Nash equilibrium in the context of a dual-channel supply chain competition.

The paper considers a dual-channel supply chain comprising a manufacturer, a traditional retailer and an online retailer. A two-dimensional discrete dynamical system is used to examine the Bertrand competition between the retailers. The retailers are assumed to follow bounded rational expectations. Local stability of Bertrand–Nash equilibrium is investigated with respect to the price adjustment speed.

As the price adjustment speed increases, the stability of Bertrand–Nash equilibrium is lost, leading to complex chaotic dynamics. The results showed that chaotic dynamics deteriorates the profit of the retailers. The authors also found that the chaos can be controlled using an adaptive adjustment mechanism and the retailers enjoy higher profit when the chaos is controlled.

This study helps retail managers to choose an appropriate price adjustment speed to maximize profit.

The heterogeneity of the retailers is not considered in the studies involving dynamics of retailer competition. This paper contributes to the literature by considering the operational difference between a traditional retailer and an online retailer, i.e. price adjustment speed. In addition, the study establishes a link between price adjustment speed and profit.

The purpose of this research is to investigate how to introduce a financing scheme to tackle the manufacturer's capital constraint problem, discuss the effects of data-driven marketing (DDM) quality, cross-channel-return (CCR) rate and financing interest rate on the members' pricing and delivery-lead-time decisions and optimal performances, and analyzes `how to achieve the coordination within a dual-channel supply chain (DSC) by contract coordination.

This work establishes a DSC model with DDM, and the offline retailer can provide internal financing to the capital-constrained online manufacturer. The demand under the price is determined based on DDM quality, customer channel preference and delivery lead time. Then, combined with the Stackelberg game, the optimal pricing and delivery-lead-time decisions are discussed under the inconsistent and consistent pricing strategies with decentralized and centralized systems. Furthermore, it designs a manufacturer-revenue sharing contract to coordinate the members under the two pricing strategies.

(1) The increase of DDM quality will reduce the delivery-lead-time under the inconsistent or consistent pricing strategy and will push the selling prices; (2) The growth of the CCR rate will raise selling prices and extend the delivery-lead-time under the decentralized decision; (3) Under price competition, the offline selling price is higher than the online selling price when customers prefer the offline channel and vice versa; (4) The retailer and the manufacturer can achieve a win-win situation through a manufacturer-revenue sharing contract.

This paper contributes to the studies related to DSC by investigating pricing and delivery-lead-time decisions based on DDM, CCR, internal financing and supply chain contract and proposes some managerial implications.

It is necessary to implement green supply chains. But green development needs to be gradual and coexist with ordinary products in the market. This paper aims to study the green and ordinary product pricing and green decision-making under chain-to-chain competition.

This paper considers consumers' multiple preferences and takes two competitive supply chains with asymmetric channels as the research object. Through the construction of the game models involving different competitive situations, this paper studies the pricing, green decision-making and the supply chains' profits, and discusses the impact of consumer green preference, channel preference, green investment and competition on the decision-making and performance. Finally, this paper further studies the impact of the decision structure on the environmental and economic benefits of supply chains.

The results show that consumer green preference has an incentive effect on the green supply chain and also provides an opportunity for the regular supply chain to increase revenue. Specifically, consumers' preference for green online channels improves the product greenness, but its impact on the green retailer and regular supply chain depends on the green investment cost. Moreover, competition not only fosters product sustainability, but also improves supply chain performance. This paper also points out that the decentralization of the regular supply chain is conducive to the environmental attributes of the green product, while the environment-friendly structure of the green supply chain is different under different conditions. In addition, the profit of a supply chain under centralized decision is not always higher than that under decentralized decision.

The novelty of this paper is that it investigates the pricing of two heterogeneous alternative products and green decision-making for the green product under the competition between two supply chains with asymmetric channels, in which the green supply chain adopts dual channels and the regular supply chain adopts a single retail channel.

Distribution systems usually utilize both traditional retailing channels in conjunction with e-channels. The purpose of this paper is to investigate a dual-channel supply chain, comprising a traditional retailing channel and an e-channel under disruption. By benchmarking against the centralized decision structure, the authors intend to propose a collaboration model to achieve channel coordination as well as more reliable decisions.

Four different channel disruption scenarios, with customers’ reaction toward disruptions, are examined, and then, optimal pricing decisions for both centralized and decentralized decision-making structures are extracted. Next, a collaboration mechanism based on the dominancy power of channel members is developed to entice all channel members to participate in channel coordination. By benchmarking the proposed collaboration model against both the decentralized/centralized structures a win–win solution is guaranteed for all channel members. In addition, the proposed model ensures more reliable decisions than the centralized structure, as it guarantees less fluctuated income levels.

This study shows, as the disruption probability grows, the channel profit decreases while the channel-retailing price increases. Furthermore, the exact alignment of the centralized decision-making approach and the proposed collaboration model is not achievable due to the problem infeasibility. Numerical experiments and sensitivity analyses benchmark the performance of the proposed collaboration mechanism against the centralized structure for the full alignment with centralized decision-making approach.

This study contributes to the channel conflict literature as jointly considers pricing decisions, disruptions and coordination. Further, consumers’ reaction toward disruption is analyzed through a transshipment agreement.