Strategic introduction for competitive fresh produce in an e-commerce platform with demand information sharing

To satisfy consumers' diverse demands for fresh produce, the supplier may introduce competitive fresh produce through the reselling or agency channel of the platform to expand market coverage. Under the uncertain market environment, the supplier faces the problem of how to choose the appropriate product introduction strategy to promote information sharing cooperation, and the platform faces how to implement information sharing strategy under different product introduction strategies. This paper attempts to solve these problems and provide practical guidance for the cooperation between the supplier and the platform. Aiming at a fresh produce supply chain comprised of a supplier providing the freshness-keeping effort and a platform owning private demand information, we model a multistage game under asymmetric information to study the two strategies. Our results indicate that the platform may share information voluntarily, depending on the competition intensity and freshness sensitivity. To promote the information sharing cooperation with the platform, the supplier may choose introduction with agency selling even if a high commission fee is charged. Since information sharing promotes the product introduction strategy and vice versa, we reveal a complementary relationship between the two strategies. Interestingly, we find that introducing competitive fresh produce may increase the demand for original fresh produce when the freshness sensitivity is high. However, the platform may suffer from introduction with agency selling even at a high commission rate in some cases.