JOURNAL OF SHANDONG UNIVERSITY(NATURAL SCIENCE) ›› 2026, Vol. 61 ›› Issue (8): 29-38.doi: 10.6040/j.issn.1671-9352.0.2025.032

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Operations decision of fresh e-commerce supply chain with Third Party Logistics participation under random demand

LI Jinna1, CUI Xin2, ZOU Kangkang1, GAO Su1*   

  1. 1. Shandong Transportation Research Institute, Jinan 250031, Shandong, China;
    2. School of Management, Shandong University, Jinan 250100, Shandong, China
  • Published:2026-08-12

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Abstract: This paper combines a third party logistics(TPL)providers preservation efforts with a fresh e-commerce companys pricing and inventory decisions. A Stackelberg game model is built, covering a fresh product supplier, a TPL provider, and a fresh e-commerce company. The effects of consumers freshness sensitivity coefficient, a TPL providers preservation cost, and a fresh e-commerce companys demand forecasts on product prices, freshness, and supply chain members profits are analyzed and solved, with numerical simulation support. Results show that when a fresh e-commerce company overorders, the supplier and TPL provider benefit, while the e-commerce company may suffer losses due to full-scale demand forecast risks. As consumers become more sensitive to freshness, product prices and a TPL providers preservation efforts rise. This boosts the suppliers and TPL providers profits but may increase the fresh e-commerce companys losses. Therefore, a fresh e-commerce company should adopt a conservative product demand forecasting strategy when determining order quantities.

Key words: e-commerce of fresh agricultural products, random demand, third-party logistic, freshness-keeping effort, Stackelberg game

CLC Number: 

  • F224
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