Coordinating O2O fresh agricultural supply chain considering information asymmetry when disruption occurs offline

Abstract

With an increasing number of fresh agricultural products flowing into O2O model, the managers of e-commerce companies are looking for investment opportunities to establish the distribution channels online and offline. Based on the fresh agricultural supply chain, time limitation and information asymmetry has been considered. In order to improve the experience in the offline store, detailer takes investment, which is based on the hypothesis that investment could bring more guests in a way. The research indicates that the increase of investment could improve the best sales volume and maximum of supply chain profits when influence parameter exceeds the threshold. And when influence parameter stays much lower, the increase of cost is superior to the increase of profits, resulting in the decrease of maximum of supply chain profits, which implies a worse chance to invest a lot.