In the direct sales model,the e-tailers sell fresh products to consumers in the online market and promise con-sumers a full-refund policy without return.Consumers are always concerned the products'freshness level before purchas-ing online fresh products.Third-party logistics(3PL)providers will be motivated to exert a fresh-keeping effort to keep the fresh product at the optimum level when offering consumers or e-tailers fresh-keeping services.Considering the fresh-keeping service provided by 3PL providers,to alleviate consumers'concerns about the freshness level and encourage them to purchase fresh products,some e-tailers will purchase fresh-keeping services from 3PL providers and offer them to con-sumers for free.However,some e-tailers have stopped offering the free service;they have offered consumers the opportun-ity to purchase fresh-keeping services.To explore an e-tailer's optimal fresh-keeping strategy,we consider a market con-sisting of an e-tailer and a 3PL provider.Three alternative scenarios are discussed,scenario N:no fresh-keeping service;scenario C:some consumers voluntarily purchase fresh-keeping services;and scenario S:the e-tailer offers a complement-ary fresh-keeping service.We find that introducing a fresh-keeping service increases the retail price in scenario C when the coefficient of fresh-keeping cost is high and the unit fresh-keeping service fee is low,but that decreases in scenario S when the unit fresh-keeping service fee is low.Comparing the e-tailer's equilibrium profits,we find that introducing a fresh-keeping service does not necessarily benefit the e-tailer.The coefficients of fresh-keeping costs and unit fresh-keeping ser-vice fees play a critical role in selecting the fresh-keeping strategy.Meanwhile,the 3PL provider is biased;specifically,the 3PL provider's fresh-keeping effort is related to that of the policyholder.

Qiufang Huang;Yaqin Hu

School of Management,University of Science and Technology of China,Hefei 230026,China

中国科学技术大学学报

[1]Qiufang Huang;Yaqin Hu-.Fresh product e-tailer's optimal fresh-keeping strategy under three scenarios)[J].中国科学技术大学学报,2022(10):53-66

tailer,tailers,sumers,refund,purchas,opportun,policyholder

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