Logistics Optimization Of Community Chain Supermarket Of Fruits And Vegetables

With the rapid development of urbanization, city and town dwellers have entered the era of community, as a result, community commerce is changing with each passing day, and consumer spending on community commerce has been increasing year by year. Community residents have difficulty in buying fruits and vegetables, the pricing of fruits and vegetables is unreasonable, the safety and quality of the fruits and vegetables cannot be guaranteed, the circulation of fruits and vegetables is to be improved and the contradiction among the manufacturers, sellers and consumers of fruits and vegetables are to be eased, all these problems make developing fruit and vegetable supermarkets in communities a trend.Enterprise aims in maximizing its profits, while consumer pursues the maximization of utility. The logistics cost of fruits and vegetables and the supermarket location are critical factors which determine the profitability of the chain supermarket of fruits and vegetables opening in the community and whether it is able to meet the requirements of the consumer. Logistics optimization should take three considerations which have influence on logistics cost, final price and customer satisfactory into account:selection of the supplier, logistics and distribution and supermarket outlets location. This study, in the first place, investigated the demand on fruits and vegetables consumption of community residents by means of questionnaires, then performed analog simulation by building models of logistics cost from the perspective of supply chain to analyze the logistics cost at each logistics trade phase of different logistics patterns and to identify the cost drivers for logistics cost of fruits and vegetables. After that, this study put forward a distribution pattern of logistics optimization for fruits and vegetables chain supermarkets in communities, with reference to five typical distribution patterns of chain supermarkets and electronic commerce logistics of agricultural products. At last, on the basis of consumer utility function and with enterprise’s maximum profit as the objective, this study established models for outlets locations of fruits and vegetables chain supermarkets and provided model examples.The consumption demands for fruits and vegetables of the community residents reveal that the community residents pay more attention to the freshness, nutrition and safety of the fruits and vegetables, the pricing of fruits and vegetables which are of safety and high quality has the most remarkable impact on the community residents’ willingness to pay. The community supermarket should also consider how to make it more convenient for consumer to buy fruits and vegetables. The analog simulation of logistics cost model tells that in case of docking logistics mode, the logistics costs for each logistics trade phase are lower. Making reference to electronic commerce logistics of agricultural products, the study proposed this logistics optimization distribution pattern for community chain supermarkets of fruits and vegetables, which can, to some extent, improve the distribution efficiency, cut the price, ensure the freshness and quality, in addition, consumer’s demand can be addressed which will improve their satisfactory and basically balance the supply and demand. Business area, pricing, total cost of logistics, population density and consumer total demand are the main points that should be taken into consideration in optimizing the outlets locations of community chain supermarket of fruits and vegetables.The investigation on demands of fruits and vegetables of community residents provides a thread and direction for the operation and logistics optimization of community chain supermarket of fruits and vegetables. The analog simulation of logistics cost model allows comparing the advantage and disadvantage of two logistics modes, finding out the cost drivers at each logistics trade phase and resetting the parameters according to actual situation to provide the major participants with justification for decision making. Logistics optimization of community chain supermarket of fruits and vegetables facilitates achieving the "tri-parties win" goal: consumer satisfaction, increased income for farmers and profit for supermarkets. Outlets location selection model can lay a foundation for decision of optimizing distribution and chain stores site selection.