关键词: 生鲜农产品供应链, 新鲜度, 消费者偏好, 温度控制投入, 供应链协调

Abstract: Fresh agricultural products have prominent biological characteristics that are perishable over time. At the same time, the loss rate of fresh agricultural products in transportation and circulation is also severe. According to the survey results, statistics show that only two fruits and vegetables due to loss cause severe economic losses, which dramatically affect the fresh produce supply chain members of the profit. With the improvement of people’s living standards, consumers pursue the safety of fresh agricultural products and the high quality of fresh agricultural products, and freshness is an important indicator to measure the quality of fresh agricultural products. Therefore, consumers’ demand for high freshness drives the fresh agricultural products supply chain members to put in more freshness preservation efforts. In recent years, some scholars have begun to pay attention to the relationship between freshness and temperature and time and have carried out related research by combining the characteristics of fresh produce. However, none have considered freshness as a function of the dynamic change of temperature control inputs. In addition, from the perspective of consumers, some scholars have suggested that consumer preference is another crucial factor in determining the demand for fresh produce but have not yet suggested that consumer preference is a function of the dynamic change in freshness.
Therefore, this paper raises the following questions: 1)What is the optimal temperature control input strategy in centralized and decentralized scenarios? 2)How do consumer preferences and discount rates affect the optimal strategy? 3)What kind of contract can be designed to coordinate this supply chain perfectly?
To address the above problem, this paper considers a three-level fresh produce supply chain in which suppliers, retailers, and TPL determine their respective temperature control inputs, where suppliers determine the selling price of fresh produce:1) Give the optimal temperature control input strategies for fresh produce under centralized and decentralized scenarios;2)Compare equilibriums under the two scenarios; And 3)propose a mutual cost-sharing-with-fixed-subsidy contract to coordinate the fresh produce supply chain. The primary study shows that the larger the share of each member of the three-tier fresh produce supply chain in the overall benefits of the supply chain, the more significant the proportion of temperature control input costs that they are willing to bear for each other and vice versa.
We consider the retailer side for temperature control inputs in future studies. In addition, the article does not consider other costs of the three parties in the supply chain, such as the supplier’s management costs, the retailer’s sales costs, and the TPL’s maintenance costs, etc. However, the related costs of the three parties in the supply chain can be considered in future research. Finally, to encourage all parties in the fresh produce supply chain to increase their investment in temperature control, the government will subsidize the supply chain parties and introduce their subsidies into the relevant model. The article does not consider government subsidies, however, in future research, introducing government subsidies for fresh produce’s temperature control input strategy is also of practical significance.

Key words: fresh produce supply chain, freshness, consumer preference, temperature control inputs, supply chain coordination