Can blockchain help food supply chains with platform operations during the COVID-19 outbreak?

•Investigate the values and impacts of blockchain on food supply chain with platform operations during the COVID-19 outbreak.•Examine the all-win situation for platform, supplier and consumers in the presence of blockchain implementation.•Explore the supply chain coordination with prevalent contract...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Electronic commerce research and applications 2021-09, Vol.49, p.101093-101093, Article 101093
Main Authors: Yang, Lu, Zhang, Jun, Shi, Xiutian
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Blockchain
Coronavirus outbreak
Food supply chain
Platform operations
Supply chain coordination
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Summary:•Investigate the values and impacts of blockchain on food supply chain with platform operations during the COVID-19 outbreak.•Examine the all-win situation for platform, supplier and consumers in the presence of blockchain implementation.•Explore the supply chain coordination with prevalent contracts with blockchain adoption.•Discuss the blockchain adoption strategies of the platform and supplier with consideration of the fixed cost of such implementation, product infection and supplier’s dishonest behaviors. Food selling platforms are facing both challenges and opportunities during the COVID-19 outbreak as the enforcement of social distancing protocols has pushed consumers with serious health and safety concerns to shop online. Observing that platforms and their suppliers have adopted blockchain technologies and linked selected information nodes separately to foster consumers’ trust, we establish a game-theoretic model to study the operations decisions and blockchain adoption strategies for a food supply chain consisting of one platform and one supplier. We explore the values and impacts of blockchain on the retailing platform, supplier, and consumers, respectively. An all-win situation is achieved when both members of the supply chain adopt blockchain. We further propose that not all prevalent supply chain contracts can achieve supply chain coordination in the presence of blockchain. In extended studies, we examine the incentives of the supply chain members’ blockchain implementation with consideration of the fixed cost of such adoption, product infection, and tampered information.
ISSN:1567-4223
1873-7846
DOI:10.1016/j.elerap.2021.101093