Inducing information provision on hybrid fresh produce e-commerce platforms via supplier freshness-keeping effort

This paper investigates the interplay between a platform’s information sharing decisions and its business mode selections and demonstrates how suppliers’ freshness-keeping efforts affect this interplay in a fresh produce supply chain with a supplier and a platform. We develop a theoretical model with stochastic and freshness-dependent demand, which the supplier can maintain product freshness through freshness-keeping efforts. The platform may share private demand information to support the supplier’s freshness-keeping decision and operates three business modes, namely the reselling mode (R), agency mode (A), and hybrid mode (H). Our findings show that under Mode A, the platform always voluntarily shares information, achieving a win–win outcome for both the platform and the supplier. Under Modes R and H, although information sharing drives up the wholesale price, the platform still prefers to share information when the supplier’s freshness-keeping efficiency is sufficiently high. Specifically, under Mode H, a dual-threshold information-sharing policy emerges: even when freshness-keeping efficiency is moderate, the platform shares information only when the commission rate is moderate. Furthermore, we find that information sharing motivates the supplier to enhance freshness-keeping efforts, which in turn improves product freshness. This mechanism termed the freshness-keeping improvement effect of information sharing functions as a critical incentive for the platform to voluntarily share demand information.Additionally, adopting Mode H may increase the wholesale price and exacerbate the double-marginalization problem when the commission rate is sufficiently low. Finally, we find that the platform and the supplier can reach consensus on the HS strategy (i.e., Mode H with information sharing) and subsequently achieve a win–win outcome only when the commission rate is moderate. However, information sharing may hinder consensus on adopting Mode H and narrow the win–win region.​.