Who Should Manage the Price Execution of a Livestreaming Supply Chain Considering Consumer Returns?

In recent years, online livestreaming has progressively emerged as a prominent retail channel. With the growth of some leading livestreamers, the dispute over product pricing power between manufacturers and livestreamers has become a focal point of discussion. Meanwhile, the high return rate associated with livestreaming also poses a challenge to supply chain performance. In response, manufacturers seek to mitigate this risk by transferring the responsibility of return costs to the livestreamers. Inspired by these practical issues, this study constructs a supply chain system composed of a manufacturer and a livestreamer to examine how different combinations of pricing execution power and return business models affect profits, selling efforts, pricing strategies, and consumer surplus under the influence of spillover effects during livestreaming. The results indicate that: (1) Managing pricing execution always benefits the livestreamer, while whether the manufacturer can be benefited depends on the channel spillover effect coefficient. (2) The livestreamer with pricing power does not always execute at lower prices. She will set higher prices and invest more efforts with a relatively high channel spillover coefficient. (3) Transferring the responsibility for return costs to the livestreamer does not enhance the profits of supply chain stakeholders and may even diminish the livestreamer's selling efforts. The optimal return policy to incentivize livestreamer is the manufacturer bearing return costs. (4) When livestreamer manages price execution, the consumer surplus is also higher if the manufacturer bears return costs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]