When to Sell Remanufactured Products via Marketplace or Reselling: Distribution Strategy in Dual-Channel Platforms

Purpose As e-commerce reshapes product distribution, manufacturers increasingly adopt dual-channel strategies that integrate offline retail and online platforms. Meanwhile, the rise of remanufactured products, driven by environmental mandates and cost considerations, creates both opportunities for market expansion and challenges of consumer acceptance bias. These trends raise a pressing question: how should manufacturers align their product distribution strategy with their online platform cooperation mode?Methodology/approach Specifically, manufacturers may pursue market segmentation by selling remanufactured products exclusively through the online platform, or seek full market coverage by selling both new and remanufactured products through hybrid channels; meanwhile, they also choose between marketplace and reselling arrangements with the platform. Equilibrium outcomes are derived and compared under four model variants.Findings Our findings reveal that in a single-product scenario, when remanufactured products hold a strong competitive advantage, manufacturers prefer the reselling model to mitigate profit erosion from direct competition. However, this preference reverses when both new and remanufactured products are sold. Furthermore, the introduction of remanufactured products helps alleviate intense competition between channels in new product sales, and this mitigating effect is more pronounced when consumer acceptance of remanufactured products is relatively low. Finally, our analysis indicates that under the marketplace model, a hybrid sales strategy involving both new and remanufactured products on the platform fails to achieve a win-win outcome across the supply chain.Practical implications Manufacturers should align distribution and platform choices with joint consumer preferences to coordinate pricing and achieve win‑win outcomes. Retailers must adapt pricing to the platform mode and anticipate wholesale price volatility. Platforms should invest in raising consumer acceptance of remanufactured products, and switch between reselling and marketplace models according to preference levels, thereby tilting the equilibrium to their advantage.Originality/value This study jointly models product assortment and platform mode choices with differentiated remanufactured goods, incorporating consumer heterogeneity in product and channel preferences. It extends the literature by revealing how environmental responsibility, product variety, and platform governance interact, offering a unified framework that reconciles conflicting interests across the supply chain.