Selection and optimization of dual‐strategy for selling mode and preservation in e‐commerce supply chain for fresh produce

Abstract Recently, e‑commerce platforms have witnessed rapid growth and successively entered the fresh produce sector. They have established deep cooperation with upstream suppliers, thereby giving rise to a variety of cooperation modes, including wholesale () or agency () modes. Besides, to guarantee the freshness of fresh produce, suppliers or platforms are required to make preservation investment, thereby giving rise to two strategies, namely, supplier‐led () or platform‐led () preservation. This paper proposes four dual strategies of , , and , and mainly explores how to select and optimize the dual‐strategy of an e‐commerce supply chain for fresh produce. The following results are found. The platform selects or () dual‐strategy when the commission rate is low or high (moderate) in most cases. However, given the sufficiently strong consumers’ freshness preference, the platform will opt for dual‑strategy even if the commission rate is relatively high. Besides, there exist three optimization types, namely, optimizing only the selling mode, only the preservation strategy, or both simultaneously. For these optimization types, the supplier can use various transfer payments to motivate the platform to adjust dual‐strategy for win–win.