Abstract
The high cost of operation and severe competition in the agri-food e-commerce market make it hard for the small and medium agri-food enterprises (A-SMEs) to operate cost-efficiently and in a sustainable manner. This paper seeks to organize A-SMEs to develop a cooperative organization via collaborative strategies and alliance structures, named as the home-delivery-oriented agri-food supply chain (HASC) alliance, to form a substantive relationship to gain a stable foothold in the emerging e-commerce market. A theoretical framework of the HASC alliance is built with its organizational structure and schematics of the process of implementation strategies that cover the aspects of last-mile chain extension, food transportation, and production/distribution control. Furthermore, a three-step analytical method is proposed to analyze the performance of the alliance with the aim to provide appropriate strategies to hedge against the potential risks of cooperation instability. A hypothetical case is conducted, and the results show that: (1) the performance of the hypothetical HASC alliance with time shows significant variation in the beginning, but it gains stability with the application of stability control strategies; (2) the cooperation stability of HASC alliance is very sensitive to the performance of the strategies that control the customer and environment variations; (3) the factors of trust and market fluctuation have higher effects on membership and environmental stability, respectively; (4) the minimum and maximum cost ranges of control strategies at which the alliance can maintain its stability and performance are 5% and 29%, respectively, of the total operation cost.
Highlights
In recent years, consumers have increasingly demanded high-quality, healthy/green, readily available, and widely varied agri-food products, resulting in the rapid growth of the agri-food e-commerce (AE) market
This study found a solution to the above problems of A-SMEs in the form of an alliance named a “home-delivery-oriented agri-food supply chain (HASC) alliance”
The alliance focuses on how to organize agri-food supply chain-related enterprises, especially A-SMEs, to develop a cooperative organization via collaborative strategies and alliance structures to form a substantive relationship to gain a stable foothold in the emerging AE market
Summary
Consumers have increasingly demanded high-quality, healthy/green, readily available, and widely varied agri-food products, resulting in the rapid growth of the agri-food e-commerce (AE) market. A small number of firms with strong financial strength have chosen to perform an in-house agri-food home delivery service to achieve high autonomy Such a positive but inefficient strategy is unsuitable for A-SMEs, especially for those that are facing a severe financial burden. Organizing the relevant entities (A-SMEs) to form an alliance with a strategic perspective could be one of the best options In this manner, partners (e.g., suppliers, manufacturers, logistic companies, and e-commerce companies) with different competencies in the supply chain are allowed to focus on their core activities, such as providing quality products and services [20,21,22].
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