Logistics service decision for e-commerce supply chain with fairness concern under uncertain environment

Abstract

In this paper, we construct a two-echelon supply chain composed of an e-commerce platform and a manufacturer. We investigate the impact of manufacturer’s fairness concern (MFC) on e-commerce supply chain logistics service decisions under an uncertain environment. Given the uncertainty of the market environment, we depict unit cost of product and logistics service elasticity as uncertain variables. We construct four game-theoretical models, i.e. the manufacturer or the platform undertakes logistics service without and with considering the MFC, and compare the equilibrium solutions through numerical analysis. The results demonstrate that providing logistics services through an e-commerce platform increases the profits of all supply chain participants, regardless of whether the MFC is considered or not. Furthermore, we discover that the manufacturer will not always benefit from the MFC, the MFC can decrease the expected profits of supply chain participants. Interestingly, an increase in the level of environmental uncertainty does not necessarily imply a threat to the interests of supply chain participants. Under an uncertain environment, every supply chain participant needs to consider its fairness concern behavior and coordinate with logistics service strategies.

KEYWORDS:

• Uncertainty theory
• E-commerce supply chain
• logistics service decision
• fairness concern
• game theory

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by Humanities and Social Sciences Youth Foundation, the Ministry of Education of the People’s Republic of China: [grant no 21YJC630006]; the National Natural Science Foundation of China: [grant nos 72102171, 72071092, and 61873108]; the National Social Science Foundation of China: [grant no 22FGLB078].