Coordinating a three-echelon fresh agricultural products supply chain considering freshness-keeping effort with asymmetric information

Abstract This paper studies the coordination problem of a three-echelon supply chain system consisting of one supplier, third-party logistics service providers (TPLSP) and one retailer that provides seasonal fresh agricultural products to customers. The market demand for the retailer is assumed to be influenced by the retail price, the product's freshness and other random variables. Both quantity and quality losses are viewed as endogenous variables of the freshness-keeping effort, which is decided by the TPLSP. Dynamic game models for both the decentralized decision mode and the centralized decision mode are developed, and asymmetric demand information is considered in the decentralized decision mode. The analysis shows that decentralized decision making could result in the distortion of the order quantity and selling price and could ultimately result in a loss of supply chain profit. The TPLSP is motivated to exaggerate the demand, which could seriously damage the supplier's interests. Based on an analysis of the major influencing factors in the supply chain system, a coordination contract based on cost and revenue sharing (RS) is designed for the two transaction processes in the three-echelon supply chain system. We illustrate the proposed models with a numerical study and conduct a sensitivity analysis of some of the key parameters in the models. It is proven that with the designed contract, the sales volume can be significantly expanded, all the supply chain members can benefit from Pareto improvement, and both the retailer and the TPLSP have no incentive to exaggerate the market demand.

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