Optimal Pricing Strategies and Channel Modes Selection for A Fresh Agricultural Product Supply Chain with Blockchain Traceability

The traceability system supported by blockchain technology (BCT) provides consumers with authentic information, triggering the premium effect in the fresh agricultural product supply chain (FASC). This paper introduces BCT to the FASC, which consists of a powerful manufacturer and a retailer. We consider two channel modes: the dual-channel (DC) mode, in which the retailer sells products through an offline channel and the manufacturer sells through an online channel, and the buy-online-pickup-in-store (BOPS) mode, in which the manufacturer adds BOPS options to consumers. We analyse the optimal pricing strategies in scenarios with and without BCT and discuss the channel mode selection between DC and BOPS modes for the manufacturer and retailer with BCT. The results show that when the label cost is below the threshold, the manufacturer may adopt BCT, and the retailer is incentivised to join BCT when the premium effect is high. Furthermore, the channel mode selection of the manufacturer and retailer depends mainly on the demand for the BOPS channel. When the demand for the BOPS channel is low (high), both the manufacturer and retailer prefer the DC (BOPS) mode; when the demand for the BOPS channel is moderate, the manufacturer prefers the DC mode, and the retailer prefers the BOPS mode. To resolve the conflict of channel mode preference, we design a set of fixed transfer payment contracts to ensure the uniformity of channel mode preference between the manufacturer and retailer. The adoption of BCT may improve the consumer surplus when the premium effect is high, and the consumer surplus in BOPS mode is higher than that in DC mode when the demand of the BOPS channel exceeds the threshold.