Pricing and Service Quality Guarantee Decisions in Logistics Service Supply Chain with Fairness Concern

Abstract

Although existing contributions that explore service quality guarantee problem of a logistic service supply chain (LSSC) consider fairness concern behavior of one member, little attention is paid to considering the combination of members’ fairness concern and the joint decision of pricing and service quality guarantee in LSSC. Therefore, it is necessary to research how different fairness concern affects the joint decision of pricing and service quality guarantee in an LSSC. First considering a price and quality-sensitive logistics service market, a basic model without fairness concern of a customized LSSC is established. Then, a new model with fairness concern of a decentralized LSSC is constructed based on the basic model. The optimal decision of the LSSC with fairness concern is investigated in three cases. In each case, we analyze the effect of fairness concern on the optimal decision, and the expected profits and utilities. Finally, some numerical studies are shown to verify our theoretical analyses and some managerial insights are given.