Platform-leading blockchain adoption for traceability under upstream competition

Jianghua Wu and Xin Wang ()
Additional contact information
Jianghua Wu: Renmin University of China
Xin Wang: Renmin University of China

Annals of Operations Research, 2025, vol. 348, issue 3, No 31, 2107-2143

Abstract: Abstract Customers are facing quality uncertainty when purchasing though ecommerce platforms, which may hinder their purchase intention. The platform can use the traceability of blockchain technology to alleviate consumers’ doubts. We construct a game theoretical model to investigate the issue of platform-leading blockchain adoption in a supply chain where heterogenous suppliers sell products through the platform. There are different selling modes depending on whether the platform cooperates with suppliers as a marketplace (agency contract) or a reseller (reselling contract) or both (hybrid contracts). We find that blockchain would be adopted to improve the efficiency of the supply chain when suppliers have enough capabilities to provide high-quality product regardless of selling modes. Furthermore, the platform’s leadership in adopting blockchain benefits the entire supply chain. It stimulates the platform to provide subsidies for the capable suppliers to solve the incentive mismatch between suppliers and himself. We also make the comparison of blockchain adoption in different selling modes. In particular, we find that the platform is most likely to adopt blockchain when the supplier with higher quality management capability uses the agency contract and another supplier uses the reselling contract. If the suppliers use the same contract, the supply chain usually accepts a higher cost under the pure agency contract, however, it may not be true when the commission rate is very low and the upstream competition is relatively fierce.

Keywords: Blockchain; Traceability; Upstream competition; Agency contract; Reselling contract (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2025
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://link.springer.com/10.1007/s10479-022-05147-8 Abstract (text/html)
Access to the full text of the articles in this series is restricted.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:spr:annopr:v:348:y:2025:i:3:d:10.1007_s10479-022-05147-8

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.springer.com/journal/10479

DOI: 10.1007/s10479-022-05147-8

Access Statistics for this article

Annals of Operations Research is currently edited by Endre Boros

More articles in Annals of Operations Research from Springer
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().