Value Co-creation in Agri-chains Network: An Agent-Based Simulation

Abstract

Nowadays, the consumers of agricultural products are shifting their behavior to include more ethical considerations in their decision. In particular, they have begun to pay more attention to the quality in conjunction with the traceability of any product. Such an ethical behavior possesses a challenge regarding to today's food distribution in a systematic manner. While food demand is becoming more sophisticated than ever, food supply maintains a traditional form of production. The question arises as how the traditional form may efficiently interact with increasingly sophisticated food consumers. This paper aims at proposing an improved exchange economy by applying the principle of value co-creation as a way to improve food supply. Modeling the supply chain and pointing out the important metrics associated with value co-creation is therefore called for. A horticulture-producing industrial network in Indonesia is taken as the case study. Existing interdependencies in the network are analyzed to investigate the value co-creation process and its impact on customer-responsive supply. This paper concludes that value co-creation might occur in a set of different business relationships which entail a network view of value co-creation, and not limited to the features of an iterative process be-tween two actors. The result is taken as a conceptual model that will support the next research stage that is supposed simulate the value co-creation within an agricultural chains network.