Research on the Impact of Information Scenarios on Retailers’ Strategies for Purchasing Fresh Agricultural Products

Controlling the social and environmental responsibility of extended supply chains has become one of the most challenging issues in modern management. This paper models retailers’ optimal sourcing strategies for fresh agricultural products (FAPs) in order to understand sourcing activities of retailers more systematically under two scenarios – the symmetric information scenario and the asymmetric information scenario. In this paper, we suppose that to maximize profit, retailers can choose from two types of suppliers – suppliers with freshness-keeping efforts are costly but adhere to strict social and environmental responsibility standards, while risky suppliers without freshness-keeping efforts are
less expensive but may experience responsibility violations. Hence, different sourcing strategies of retailers are modeled and simulated by numerical image analysis. The results show that the retailers’ profit is concave because of the proportion of quality-sensitive consumers. Isolated consumer-oriented approaches may have a negative impact on the level of freshness in the supply chain. On the other hand, higher penalty levels and the exposure probability of food safety incidents will have a positive impact on the freshness level in the supply chain. However, simply relying on enhanced regulations will not be enough. Instead, a combined effort, enhancing regulations, monitoring the market, and raising consumer awareness will be needed to rationalize the market and to create a quality-sensitive market. Results offer regulators and various stakeholders new insights, helping them to understand how to encourage quality sourcing practices and maximize food quality and safety in the supply chain.