Green finance contributes significantly to the openness and transparency of carbon quota trading prices, which is conducive to the development of green technology innovation. With known carbon quota trading prices, we construct game‐based operational research models to analyze fixed‐fee and mixed‐fee cross‐licensing strategies for green technologies between two competing firms under the cap‐and‐trade policy. We compare the equilibrium outcomes of no‐licensing, fixed‐fee, and mixed‐fee cross‐licensing strategies. The findings reveal that product pricing under the fixed‐fee cross‐licensing strategy is beneficial to consumers. The mixed‐fee cross‐licensing strategy is optimal in terms of firms' total profits. When the degree of product substitutions is large and the improvement in carbon emissions is small, firms are more inclined to the no‐licensing strategy. We further introduce the revenue‐sharing contract, which can extend the Pareto improvement domain and improve the performance of green technology cross‐licensing strategies.

In order to solve the problem of separation between consumer purchase and product experience in online sales, live streaming e-commerce came into being. However, the interaction of streamers is easy to cause consumers’ impulse consumption, which leads to the soaring return rate. In this context, how to make reasonable return policies to avoid the loss is an important issue for brands. This paper studies return policy selection for brands. We mainly focus on MCN (multi-channel network) click farming and customer disappointment aversion in the situations that the return-freight insurances are paid by brands or consumers or brands and MCN jointly. Three leader-follower models with brands as leaders and platforms and MCN as followers are established. To solve the above bilevel models, we discuss the conditions under which the upper and lower models are both convex and, based on these theoretical results, we give the optimal strategies for all members. Then, through numerical experiments, we analyze the impacts of customer disappointment aversion level, MCN’s ability, commission rate, brand’s return-freight insurance purchasing ratio, and other factors on each member’s optimal decision. The results show that the return policy in the situation of return-freight insurance paid by brand is suitable for a market with the high level of customer disappointment aversion; the return policy in the situation of return-freight insurance paid by consumers is applicable to the case of low customer disappointment aversion and high commission rate; the return policy in the situation of return-freight insurance paid by brand and MCN jointly is suitable for the case of low MCN capability and can effectively restrain the click farming from MCN.

This paper considers a sales mode selection problem between resale and agency modes on e-commerce platforms for a manufacturer with traditional retail channel, direct selling channel, and e-commerce platform channel. By considering the factors price competition, market shares, and commission rate, we construct two leader-follower models with the manufacturer as a leader and traditional retailer and e-commerce platform as followers. To obtain optimal solutions, we discuss the conditions under which the upper and lower models are convex and then give optimal strategies for all members in the network. Through numerical experiments, we analyze the impact of price competition intensity, market shares, and commission rate on mode selection strategies and the changing trend of each member’s optimal pricing and profit under different sales modes. The numerical results reveal the following revelations: If the market share of the traditional retail channel is lower than the direct selling channel, the manufacturer should choose the agency mode when the market share of the direct selling channel and price competition are lower or when the market share of the direct selling channel together with the price competition and the commission rate is higher; otherwise, the manufacturer should choose the resale mode. If the market share of the direct selling channel is lower than the traditional retail channel, the manufacturer should choose the agency mode when the price competition is weak and choose the resale mode when the price competition is strong. Under certain conditions, a win–win situation can be achieved no matter how the manufacturer chooses.