Coordination of dual-channel fresh produce supply chain with corporation social responsibility and freshness-keeping effort
摘要
With the rapid development of the Internet and third-party logistics, many consumers are increasingly relying on online channel to buy their products as opposed to traditional retail channels. In recent years, the dual-channel fresh produce supply chain (FPSC) dominated by the supplier with an online sale channel and an offline sale channel is an important sale mode. For the FPSC, achieving channel coordination and resolving the channel conflict between online channel and offline channel is crucial for its implementation. However, the coordination problem of the FPSC composed of one supplier and one retailer, in which the supplier undertakes corporation social responsibility (CSR) and the retailer performs freshness-keeping effort (FKE), has been seldom studied. The channel coordination of such a dual-channel FPSC is investigated in this study. For the centralized problem, firstly the profit of the FPSC is proved to be concave with respect to the CSR investment, the FKE and the online and offline sale prices under certain conditions. We show that the optimal sale prices and the profit of the FPSC are higher than those of the FPSC without CSR and FKE. Subsequently, the equilibrium solution of FPSC under the wholesale price contract is solved to get baseline profits. Then, a mixed contract combining two-tariff contract and channel profit-sharing contract is proposed to coordinate the FPSC and achieve Pareto improvement of the profit and the welfare of consumer. Lastly, two numerical examples are used to illustrate the correctness of theoretical analysis, and are employed to investigate the impact of CSR effect factor and freshness sensitivity on the profit, the CSR investment and FKE. The managerial insights for improving the FPSC are also presented.