Green R&D Financing Strategy in Platform Supply Chain with Data-Driven Marketing

Platform enterprises can improve green R&D efficiency by data-driven marketing (DDM) activities and can also provide financing assistance to manufacturers. In this context, for a platform supply chain consisting of one manufacturer facing a shortage of green R&D funds and a one third-party platform, this paper develops four game models under two financing channels (bank financing channel and platform financing channel) and two selling modes (agency selling mode and reselling mode). The equilibrium results of different models are derived and compared, and then the choices of selling mode and financing channel from the perspectives of both the manufacturer and the platform are analyzed. The conclusions show that the consumers' sensitivities to green R&D and DDM activities, as well as service commission fee, are major factors influencing green R&D level and both parties' choice of selling mode and financing channel. In most cases, a platform financing channel can promote the green R&D level better and is more beneficial to the manufacturer and the platform. Only in a few cases, the two parties prefer the reselling mode and bank financing channel. However, agent selling with bank financing will never be their optimal strategy. There exists four situations in which the manufacturer and the platform can agree on a same strategy on selling mode and financing channel.