Strategic Integration Decision under Supply Chain Competition in the Presence of Online Channel

The Impact of Government Interventions and Consumer Green Preferences on the Competition between Green and Nongreen Supply Chains

The green supply chain (GSC) has become a major trend that advocates for the sustainability of supply chains. To seek optimal strategies for the GSC, the competition between green and nongreen supply chains (NGSCs), along with the impacts of government subsidies and tax policies and the green preferences of consumers, are discussed in this study. A pricing-strategy model of an NGSC and a GSC was conducted by considering the cross-price effects. The equilibrium strategies (the optimal green-technology level, the pricing, and the profits) were achieved and were comparatively analyzed with backward induction. For more in-depth research, a robust sensitivity analysis was conducted, and the Taguchi method was used to identify the main factors that affect the revenues of NGSCs and GSCs. The results show that the vertical collaboration between manufacturers and retailers can help to improve the greenness of products and bring more benefits to consumers. The government interventions have an effect, and when the government sets a premeditated threshold for subsidies and taxation, GSC members can earn more, and the green products obtain more competitiveness. The green preferences of consumers are the primarily conducive factor to the sustainability and profit increases of GSCs. However, the green-technology-investment cost will not have a significant influence on the equilibrium strategies.

The Coordination of Multi-Stage Discounts in a Dual Channel Fresh Agricultural Produce Supply Chain: Minimizing the Loss of Quantity and Quality

This paper explores the coordination of the agricultural cooperative to supermarket or E-commerce supply chain, under the condition of quantity loss with a mixed decay function of exponential and logistical distribution. The nature of this process is analyzed, and the corresponding demand and supply functions with single- and multi-stage discount strategies are constructed, respectively, to create a working model. The optimal discount ratios for supermarkets and agricultural cooperatives in decentralized and centralized decision-making modes coupled with single- and multi-stage discounts are calculated, respectively. Finally, a universal optimal strategy is designed, which can be applied to various quantity decay scenarios and makes the discount strategy more generalized. The results show that discounts can coordinate supply chains more effectively; not only would fresh agricultural produce be sold out before it starts to rot, but also the benefit conflicts arising from both supermarkets vs. cooperatives and traditional vs. E-commerce channels could be equilibrated. Further, multi-stage discounts are more difficult to coordinate than single-stage ones, the corresponding optimal discount ratios rely on the initial quantity of fresh agricultural produce in the supply chain, its market share in the traditional distribution channel, the potential market size, retail price, the price sensitivity coefficient of the channel, the cross-elasticity coefficient of prices between different channels, and the properties of the quantity loss. It is concluded that, regardless of what kind of quantity and quality loss occurs, whether decentralized or centralized decision making is selected, or whether the supermarket’s or agricultural cooperative’s discount ratio is considered, a universal price discount consisting of a fixed term and a drift term could both maximize supply chain profit and coordinate this dual-channel supply chain.