We investigate whether and when a retailer who sells two quality differentiated products supplied by two manufacturers should reveal product fit information to help consumers find a product that better fits their needs. We show that the retailer’s optimal information strategy depends on the consumer’s unit misfit cost and production efficiencies of both manufacturers. The retailer should reveal product fit information when the ratio of the efficiencies of the two manufacturers is sufficiently low, or the consumer’s unit misfit cost is sufficiently high. The retailer is less likely to benefit from revealing product fit information when the consumer’s unit misfit cost is either low or very high. Two mechanisms, margin-enhancing (driving the efficient manufacturer to reduce the wholesale price) and market-targeting (setting higher retail prices for both products), that the retailer can benefit from revealing product fit information are discussed, and the associated conditions are identified. Our findings suggest that the inefficient manufacturer is always better off when the retailer reveals fit information, but the efficient manufacturer may suffer. A win-win-win for all supply chain members can be achieved under certain conditions.

Although many studies have suggested that the relationship between different supply chain members significantly affects agricultural product quality, suppliers’ perceptions of fairness, which greatly influence their decisions on building the relationship quality, are often overlooked. Particularly, the empirical evidence to investigate the impacts of suppliers’ fairness on the relationship quality and the factors that affect the suppliers’ fairness is missing, and therefore this knowledge gap needs to be filled by new research. Herein, we conducted a survey of 450 agricultural product suppliers and systemically analyzed the impact of antecedents on fairness perception and the impact of fairness perception on relationship quality. In addition, we developed a structural equation model and found that information sharing and price satisfaction had significantly positive effects on procedural fairness and distributive fairness, respectively. Furthermore, our studies demonstrated that procedural fairness is more important in improving the relationship quality than distributive fairness. However, supplier dependence is another important impact factor, and it greatly decreases the positive effects of suppliers’ fairness on relationship quality. In summary, the study results provide several managerial implications and extend our understanding of the importance of suppliers’ fairness in the relationship quality, which involves product development with respect to the supplier’s performance.