Operational Decisions in a Fresh Agricultural Products Supply Chain under Production-Logistics Collaboration

Abstract

Fresh agricultural product supply chains face significant challenges in coordinating freshness preservation and logistics operations. To examine the value of production-logistics collaboration, this paper develops a three-tier supply chain system consisting of a supplier, a retailer, and a logistics service provider. The optimal decisions and profit outcomes under decentralized operation and production-logistics collaboration are compared within a Stackelberg game framework. The optimal wholesale price, purchase quantity, freshness preservation effort level, and member profits are derived under both modes. The results show that higher demand price sensitivity reduces the optimal purchase quantity and freshness preservation effort level, while a stronger price impact of freshness preservation effort encourages supply chain members to expand purchase scale and increase preservation investment. Compared with decentralized operation, production-logistics collaboration improves the optimal purchase quantity, the retailer’s profit, and the joint profit of the supplier and the logistics service provider. With an appropriate profit-sharing mechanism, collaboration enables mutual benefit between the supplier and the logistics service provider. Numerical analysis further indicates that this collaboration mode is more suitable for fresh agricultural products with low demand price sensitivity and strong freshness value conversion capability.