Research On Fresh Produce Distribution Mode Decision Of Retailer's Online Channel

In our country,fresh produce e-commerce market developed very fast in recent years,and fresh produce has become a new business of e-commerce companies.Except for large fresh produce e-commerce platform,many small fresh food retailers are also trying to sale fresh produce via online channel under the background of "internet+",while the end distribution of the fresh produce turns out to be a hard problem need to handle with since they neither have the logistics foundation nor the large trade scale,so they are facing many problems in end distribution process.Under the conditions of above,in order to help fresh produce retailers choose right distribution mode,take control of their distribution costs and improve the consumer experiment of distribution service,it is necessary to carry out deep study on the distribution mode of online fresh produce.Now there are mainly five distribution modes,namely self-distribution,outsourcing distribution,joint distribution,home delivery and direct distribution from production base.In this paper,the character of fresh produce and its distribution process are analyzed in detail firstly.Since fresh produce is very easy to deteriorate,the distribution process has a high level of distribution aging requirements.And because of the distribution capacity limitation,the distribution service that fresh produce retailers supplied can only cover limited areas.Based on the reality,two kinds of distribution modes that fit small fresh produce retailers are put forward,one is self-distribution and the other one is outsourcing distribution.Besides,advantages and disadvantages of the two modes are compared.Secondly,the factors that affect the decision of fresh produce distribution mode are analyzed in detail,including distribution resources,the market demand of fresh food,the level of distribution service,the distribution cost and other factors.Moreover,this paper also analyzed the impact mechanism of these factors.Thirdly,under consideration of these factors,taking the minimization of total cost of distribution as final goal,self-distribution decision mode and outsourcing distribution mode are constructed with startup costs of distribution vehicles,human cost of distribution staff,punish costs caused by delayed distribution and fresh cost are considered.Finally,the algorithm of model solving is designed,and the improved particle swarm optimization algorithm is used to solve the models.As the models solving results shown,under the conditions set in this paper,threshold exists between self-distribution and distribution outsourcing,the retailer chooses self-distribution when the distribution quantity is lower than the threshold value,otherwise the retailer chooses distribution outsourcing;in addition,labor cost has a greater impact on self-outsourcing decision-making,retailers tend to choose distribution outsourcing with the increases of labor cost;as for the distribution service level,when the cost of overtime delivery is lower than the cost of distribution vehicles and distribution personnel that are increased in order to finish the distribution in time,the retailer will choose time-out distribution in order to control the delivery cost,thus affecting the quality of delivery service.This research is supposed to provide a basis for retailers to make distribution mode decision of fresh produce of online channel.