Research On Pricing And Service Decision Of Dual-Channel Supply Chain Considering Blockchain Technology And Consumer Channel Preference

With the fast-growing development of the Internet economy,e-commerce has penetrated every aspect of life,and more and more people are adopting online shopping to purchase goods.In response to consumers’ purchasing needs,the dual-channel structure model,where traditional and online retail channels co-exist,is also being applied more often in real life.Due to the limitations of traditional information technology and market centralization mechanism,poor product security and non-transparent information in the dual-channel supply chain have greatly reduced customers’ willingness to purchase and led to the loss of enterprise benefits.The advantages of decentralization and smart contracts brought by blockchain can monitor the whole process of commodity circulation in real time and solve the problems of poor product security and opaque information.However,while blockchain technology has many benefits,its application can affect business decisions.Therefore,it is crucial to study the decision-making of the dual-channel supply chain under blockchain technology and the conditions for enterprises to introduce blockchain technology.This research focuses on the pricing and service decision of the dual-channel supply chain considering blockchain technology and consumer channel preference.Firstly,the dual-channel supply chain is divided into two common channel structure models,namely network direct sales and network distribution,construct a pricing decision model without blockchain technology,and use the Stackelberg game for equilibrium solution to compare and analyze the optimal decisions of supply chain members under each model.Secondly,the pricing decision models are constructed after the introduction of blockchain technology.The equilibrium solution is performed using the Stackelberg game to compare and analyze the pricing and profit problems of supply chain members in different models before and after the introduction of blockchain technology and explore the influence of blockchain technology,consumer channel preference,and other parameters on the decision of supply chain members.Finally,the supply chain pricing and service decision models are further constructed and solved in equilibrium respectively,and the optimal choices of each supply chain member are compared and analyzed to explore the influence of blockchain technology and other factors on the pricing and service of supply chain members,and numerical simulation methods are used to show the decision analysis process more intuitively and comprehensively,which is beneficial for supply chain members to make optimal choices.The research results show that:(1)Regardless of the adoption of blockchain technology,in both models,the price and profit of offline retailers increase with the degree of consumer preference for traditional channels,and the price and profit of manufacturers and e-tailers subsequently decrease,and there is little correlation between whether firms consider introducing blockchain technology and the degree of consumer channel preference.(2)Regardless of the adoption of blockchain technology,the prices and profits of manufacturers,offline retailers and e-tailers in both models decrease as the sensitivity of product inspection and evaluation time and product authenticity results increase.When the sensitivity coefficients of product inspection and evaluation time and product authenticity results satisfy a certain critical condition,it is beneficial to invest in blockchain technology for the pricing of supply chain members and their profits to be higher than under no blockchain technology adoption.(3)With the adoption of blockchain technology,the prices of manufacturers,offline retailers and e-tailers increase with the increase of consumer service sensitivity factor,and the service levels of offline retailers and online channel members decrease with the increase of consumer service sensitivity factor.In addition,the profits of manufacturers and offline retailers will be higher in the direct sales model than in the distribution model.