Research On Supply Chain Coordination Of Considering Preservation Level And Sales Efforts

In recent years,the rapid e-commerce expansion and the technological advance in cold chain logistics have resulted in a significant increase in wiliness of consumers to buy fresh products online.Meanwhile,with the improvement of quality of life,consumers are paying more and more attention to the quality of products and services while online shopping.As a result,many e-commerce companies choose the dropshipping service provided by suppliers closed to the place of origin.In the secondary supply chain composed of fresh food e-commerce companies and suppliers,the companies are responsible for exerting sales efforts to sell fresh products,while the suppliers take charge of preservation and distribution.Considering both sales effort and preservation level have an impact on market demand,and they are provided by different parties,companies and suppliers,these two different participants may have incentives to rely on efforts made by each other and become free riders.In this context,this paper begins with the supply chain mode of Fresh Food Ecommerce Company J,and then focuses on the incoordination problem exists in the secondary supply chain composed of e-commerce company J and supplier S.To be more specific,this paper establishes a Stackelberg game model,taking influencing factors such as preservation levels and sales efforts into consideration.Furthermore,sales effort levels,preservation levels,as well as benefits of the two participants are discussed and compared using the decentralized and centralized decision-making model.Based on the analysis made above,a coordination contract of "Revenue-Sharing and Cost-Sharing" is designed,and the conditions of parameters that can meet the supply chain coordination are analyzed and deduced.Finally,a case study is conducted by assigning data values from e-commerce company J’s supply chain of hairy crabs to relevant parameters in the contract model.Consequently,the validity of the contract is verified by solving this contract model and performing sensitivity analyses to the corresponding parameters.The results show that "Revenue-Sharing and Cost-Sharing" coordination contract can make the profit of the supply chain system,the e-commerce company’ssales efforts and the supplier’s preservation levels reach their optimal levels under the centralized decision-making mode.Moreover,when the parameters meet certain conditions,both e-commerce company J and supplier S obtain higher profits than that of the decentralized decision-making model,thereby achieving the Pareto improvement.Apparently,the application of the "Revenue-Sharing and Cost-Sharing" contract helped e-commerce company J solve the problem of uneven distribution of profits in the supply chain and improve the preservation levels of fresh products.At the same time,the"Revenue-Sharing and Cost-Sharing" contract also sets a benchmark for the optimal investment level in sales efforts which is beneficial to the sustainable development of e-commerce company J’s supply chain.