Research on fresh agricultural supply chain network equilibrium with consumer's preference for organic product

Based on the reality that both the organic and non-organic agricultural products are produced and sold at the same time, we used variational inequalities theory to establish a network equilibrium model for fresh agricultural supply chain, which takes consumer's preference for organic product into consideration. And by numerical examples, we also illustrated and analyzed the impact of consumer's preference for organic product and other factors on the decisions and profits of members in the supply chain. The results show that: (i) with the improvement of consumers' preference for organic product, the production and sale of organic product will help increase the income of producers and retailers, while the producer may experience fluctuations; (ii) reducing the production cost of organic product can effectively promote the development of organic agriculture; (iii) establishing a good image of organic product so as to enhance its price competitiveness will benefit all the members in the supply chain; (iv) production variations and demand fluctuations will have a significant impact on both the market and the profit of every party in the supply chain. The research conclusions can provide some referential value to the decision of enterprises and future research in the relevant fields. © 2019, Editorial Board of Journal of Systems Engineering Society of China. All right reserved.