Decision-making Of Fresh Agricultural Dual-channel Supply Chain Considering Fairness Concerns

With the development of e-commerce and information technology in China,people are gradually becoming acquainted with the e-commerce with fresh agricultural products,therefore,more and more consumers have cultivated the habit of purchasing fresh products from online channel.In order to obtain a larger market share,many manufacturers or retailers have opened online direct sales channels to meet customer demand and obtain higher profits.However,since supply chain members are not in the ideal state of complete rationality when making decisions,they will focus on their own benefits while also comparing the benefits of other members.When participants in the supply chain think that their income distribution is unfair,they may take retaliatory actions to damage other members of the supply chain and even their own interests.Similarly,in a dual-channel supply chain,consumers can easily compare the prices of the same product from different channels.When the price of the product in the selected channel is higher than the price of the other channel,consumers will feel unfair that their utility will be reduced.Or consumers will think it is worth to buy it that their utility will be increased.Therefore,it is of value to study the pricing and freshness keeping decisions on the basis of considering the fairness concerns of participants and consumers in the dual-channel supply chain of fresh agricultural products.From the perspective of partners of dual-channel supply chain,third-party logistics service providers are introduced to study the two supply chain models,namely,retailers' holding of offline traditional retail channels and online direct channels simultaneously,and manufacturers' opening of online direct channels while supplying goods to retailers.Firstly,this paper studies the centralized decision-making problem in which none of the three participants have fairness concerns,and obtains the optimal pricing and fresh-keeping efforts of the supply chain under the centralized decision-making model.Then,the reverse method is used to analyze the decentralized decision model in which all three participants have fairness concerns,and the supply chain strategy in the decentralized decision model is also obtained.Finally,by comparing the differences of strategy and utility of supply chain participants in centralized and decentralized decision models,this paper adopts the combined contract of "freshness keeping cost sharing and revenue sharing" to coordinate the decentralized supply chain.Meanwhile,a case study is used to analyze how fairness concerns of partners in the dual-channel supply chain influence their decisions.From the perspective of consumers,this paper introduces the factor of consumer fairness concern into the consumer utility function to explore the dual-channel supply chain in which the supplier opens its online direct channel while supplying fresh agricultural goods to the retailer.Similarly,by comparing the differences of strategy and utility of supply chain participants in centralized and decentralized decision models,this paper investigate the impact of consumers' fairness concern level on supply chain decisions.In summary,this paper extends the simple two-echelon dual channel supply chain to three-echelon dual channel supply chain on the premise of considering the fairness concerns,and studies two current different dual channel models,which provides theoretical support for the decision-making of the participants in the supply chain,and has certain academic and management significance.