As observed in real-world practices, retailers commonly provide the demand-enhancing service to increase product value, but this service can also be outsourced to the upstream manufacturer. The party offering the service faces a tradeoff between the incurred cost of service and the additional revenue generated. Through a service provision strategy matrix based on the question of who is better off by undertaking the service provision, we develop a model of two heterogeneous competitive retailers selling an identical product produced by one manufacturer, and obtain several managerial insights. For instance, we find that the service provision always generates two potential effects: a positive “demand expansion effect” and a negative “service cost effect.” The favored retailer always benefits from the demand expansion effect. However, the disfavored retailer does not always benefit from service provision even if the negative service cost effect is transferred through service outsourcing. If the interretailer competition is not very fierce and the two retailers have similar initial market sizes, service outsourcing yields a win–win situation. Interestingly, we identify that two retailers adopting the retailer-provided service is a classic Prisoner's dilemma. Furthermore, we also examine the manufacturer's response and find that the manufacturer obtains a profit when the retailers outsource services. Counter-intuitively, the manufacturer has an incentive to reject service outsourcing since the retailer-provided service can bring more profits. Surprisingly, this initiative rejection strategy always forces the retailers into different Prisoner's dilemmas and decrease the channel efficiency. Furthermore, we discuss some extensions to prove the robustness of our main qualitative insights.

Online orders are traditionally shipped from online logistics centers (SFO). Recently, omnichannel retailers have integrated the inventory of online logistics centers and physical stores to implement ship-from-store (SFS) and ship-to-store (STS) strategies. This article develops an analytical model to explore the integrative strategies of SFO, SFS, and STS for an omnichannel retailer. Taking the omnichannel retailer's risk-averse behavior into account, the operational strategies for different integrative strategies are investigated. The results show that the inventory of a specific integrative strategy is optimized if the logistics cost of this strategy is sufficiently small. When the store operational cost is low, Strategy STS outperforms Strategies SFO and SFS. At this point, Strategy SFS outperforms Strategy SFO if the online logistics center's inventory cost is high. Moreover, the optimal inventory volumes and profits in the risk-averse case are lower than those in the risk-neutral case. Interestingly, the omnichannel retailer should adopt Strategy STS if it is risk-averse, while Strategy SFS should be implemented if its risk appetite is high. Additionally, a hybrid strategy (SFO+SFS, SFO+STS, SFS+STS) could increase the inventory volumes if the logistics cost is relatively low. In this regard, the omnichannel retailer may benefit from starting additional order fulfillment modes.

The COVID-19 outbreak has caused uncertainty risk surges, increased sustainable supply chain vulnerabilities, and challenges to sustainable supply chain resilience (SSCR) management. Therefore, improving SSCR is necessary to alleviate vulnerabilities, and SSCR management must generate large capital investments. However, the economic downturn brought about by the COVID-19 epidemic has made some companies have limited budgets that can be used to improve SSCR. Therefore, the design of resilience solutions needs to fully consider the constraints of budgetary costs. Most of the existing related literature only discusses optimal resilience solutions under certain cost constraints, so such resilience solutions cannot be applied to most enterprises. In this study, we set the cost constraint as a variable quantity, using resilience efficiency and customer satisfaction as indicators, to determine the changing laws of optimal resilience strategies when cost constraints change. These rules can be applied to enterprises with different budgeted costs. Our findings suggest that companies should prioritize sacrificing resilience measures (RMs) related to adaptive capacity when budget costs gradually decline, and RMs related to absorptive capacity are indispensable at all budget levels. Furthermore, the pursuit of environmental and social sustainability cannot be abandoned, no matter how limited the flexible budget may be.

With the increasing pressure of global climate change, the government and enterprises are actively taking measures to accelerate emission reduction in the shipping industry. To analyse the optimal adoption strategies of carbon abatement technologies for enterprises in a turbulent environment under the cap-and-trade scheme, we construct the Stackelberg game model in the maritime supply chain and conduct a comparative analysis of profits and carbon emissions to explore the interaction between information sharing and technology adoption. The results show: (1) the impact of information sharing on profits varies under different technological conditions, and the optimal technology adoption will change with carbon price; (2) information sharing will not change total carbon emissions but significantly reduce wasted carbon emissions; (3) considering consumer's green preference, information sharing can benefit the port and the shipping company simultaneously, forming a win–win situation. This study guides maritime supply chain members in technology adoption under market uncertainty.