Channel selection of a fresh product supply chain with consumer preferences

This paper builds a dual channel supply chain which consists of a manufacturer and a retailer selling a fresh product, and analyzes the optimal decisions of supply chain with multiple sales channels. Then based on the mathematical results, we study the impact of some factors on the optimal decisions of supply chain, such as customers' sensitivity to the freshness of fresh product, consumers' sensitivity to the service level of fresh product, consumers' sensitivity to the price of fresh product, consumers' acceptance to network marketing channel. Finally we carry on numerical analysis, and compare the profit of supply chain in different consumers' acceptance to network marketing channel, and study the impact of freshness of fresh product and preservation costs on transport.