Enterprises in low-carbon supply chains have been exploring blockchain technology in order to make carbon data transparent. However, there is still some opaque information in the market, such as the value-added service efficiency. How do supply chain members make decisions between information sharing and blockchain adoption? This study considers blockchain adoption and information sharing in a low-carbon supply chain with a single manufacturer and a single retailer. The retailer has private information about value-added services and decides how to share it with the manufacturer. We examine six combined strategies comprised of blockchain scenarios and information sharing formats (no sharing, voluntary sharing, and mandatory sharing). The results indicate that supply chain members prefer blockchain technology under no sharing and voluntary sharing. Under mandatory sharing, supply chain members have incentives to participate in blockchain when the value-added service efficiency exceeds a threshold value. While the manufacturer prefers to obtain the value-added service information, the retailer decides to share information depending on the value-added service efficiency. Besides, supply chain members’ attitude toward the sharing contract also depends on the value-added service efficiency.
In the logistics sector, price competition is no longer the only form of horizontal competition between logistics service integrators; instead, it frequently takes the form of service efficiency competition among chains. Facing fierce market competition, vertical resource integration gradually becomes the trend in logistics industry integration. Using the inverse derivation method and comparative analysis, this study examines the relationship between the overall profit of its chain and that of the rival chain under service efficiency competition with or without the integration strategy. Furthermore, it builds two parallel competition logistics service supply chain models based on the inter-chain Nash competition and Stackelberg game of the chain members. The study results demonstrate that when the cost per unit of service efficiency is fixed, the greater the intensity of competition between chains, the more managers should tend to choose an integration strategy to maximize their profits. More interestingly, we find that the optimal integration decision of the supply chain is independent of the competitive intensity when the cost required to improve the unit service efficiency is extremely high.
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