Sales mode selection of fresh food supply chain based on blockchain technology under different channel competition

Abstract

In the era of new technology, e-commerce platforms (E-platform) have been opening up the fresh food market successively, so it is inevitable that they will face the problem of the selection of sales mode. We consider the blockchain-enabled traceability goodwill and product freshness, aiming to explore whether the E-platform chooses reselling or agency selling for fresh food in competition with different traditional retailers. Traditional retailers include both TR1 (the traditional retailer who collaborates with the supplier through a wholesale price contract) and TR2 (the traditional retailer who collaborates with the supplier through a revenue-sharing contract). Our results show, competition between traditional and online channels can lead to a higher price for fresh food and incentivize firms to invest more in product freshness and blockchain-enabled traceability goodwill, so it contributes to economical profits across the supply chain. Furthermore, in the presence of channel competition, the interaction between the E-platform sales mode and optimal strategies depends mainly on competition, the settable fee rate under agency selling and the wholesale price under reselling. Also, the rate increases can drive up the pricing and prompt the traditional retailer to expand investment in blockchain technology. However, it no longer affects the pricing when the rate equals the revenue-sharing proportion made by TR2. In addition, only when the wholesale price is higher than a certain threshold or the rate and competition meet certain conditions, double marginalization will make the pricing under reselling higher than that under agency selling. Combined with the numerical example, we further find that reselling is the dominant sales mode for fresh food with a low wholesale price regardless of the type of the traditional retailer. However, as the wholesale price rises, in addition to the wholesale price, the platform also needs to consider the impact of channel competition and the fee rate to choose the optimal sales mode, especially in a highly competitive environment.