Supply chain modelling considering blockchain improvement and publicity with fairness concern

Blockchain has the characteristic of being tamper-proof, which can make product information transparent and ensure data authenticity. The adoption of blockchain can improve consumer trust and expand the market. However, blockchain adoption will lead to fairness concern. We consider a supply chain comprising a manufacturer and a retailer responsible for introducing and publicising blockchain, respectively. To study the impacts of implementing and promoting blockchain on secondary supply chain decision-making and coordination under retailer’s fairness concern, we construct one centralised and two decentralised decision-making supply chain models where the retailer may have fairness concern. After solving and analysing the optimal decision-making of the three models, we design a two-part tariff contract to ensure that the supply chain is stable and coordinated. Our major findings are as follows: (1) Blockchain-based consumers’ perception of authenticity and preference for the retailer’s publicity is conducive to blockchain adoption. As consumers’ trust in products using blockchain increases, the manufacturer will increase the blockchain level, the retailer will actively promote blockchain, product pricing will increase, and supply chain system profit will increase. (2) The retailer’s excessive focus on fair profit distribution can lead to systemic damage, decrease the blockchain level and retailer publicity, and hinder the use and publicity of blockchain. As the manufacturer becomes less cost-sensitive to blockchain, the retailer’s concern for fairness hurts its own profit. (3) The sales price under centralized decision-making and decentralized decision-making is related to the marginal cost of blockchain. A high marginal cost of blockchain is the main factor hindering the popularization of blockchain. (4) The two-part tariff contract can achieve Pareto optimization where the retailer is concerned about fairness in profit distribution. In coordination under this contract, the manufacturer’s wholesale price is consistent with its own cost. The fixed technology fee can re-distribute the supply chain’s profit. The more significant the effect of blockchain on improving consumers’ product trust is, the higher is the technology fee that the manufacturer charges the retailer. Blockchain will increase the fixed fee charged by the manufacturer and raise its voice in coordination; however, fairness concern may reduce the feasibility of the coordination mechanism. In coordination under the two-part tariff contract, the manufacturer’s blockchain level has the most significant growth, and the retailer’s publicity effort and system profit also increase significantly, and the product has a more price advantage.