The impact of the COVID-19 prevention and economic interventions on express delivery industry:Evidence from China

As a fundamental logistics service,the express delivery(ED)industry provides production and consumption activities to maintain efficient supply chain operations.It plays an important role in promoting industrial development and maintaining daily life and consumption.This study examined the effects of COVID-19 on the ED industry using ED package delivery data from 31 provinces(autonomous regions and municipalities)in China.Using a difference-in-differences method,the COVID-19 outbreak was found to have a positive effect and epidemic prevention and control(EPC)policies were found to have negative effects on the development of the ED industry.In addition to EPC policies,the Chinese government has implemented other short-term economic interventions(SEI),such as the resumption of work and production(RWP),policies to balance economic growth,and epidemic prevention.This study divided the pandemic period into three stages to analyze the different impacts of EPC and SEI policy changes on the ED industry.The RWP policies adopted during the pandemic positively impacted the volume and income of packages delivered to the ED industry.The conclusions of this study are significant for the ED industry in addressing public health emergencies and for the Chinese government to formulate EPC and SEI policies during epidemic periods.

Group Buying of Competing Retailers with Fairness Concerns

The fairness concern behavior is particularly common among members in supply chain framework.The downstream retailers often compare their profits with those of the other members in the supply chain,especially that of the supplier,and do not like the unfavorable distribution of the total profits.This work considers a supply chain consisting of a supplier and two competing retailers with fairness concerns.The supplier offers a wholesale contract with quantity discount,and the two competing retailers have the options of individual purchasing and group buying.Through a Stackelberg game model,the optimal decisions for the players are obtained for the group buying and the individual purchasing strategies.The results indicate that the supplier benefits more than the retailers from the group buying strategy.In particular,the group buying strategy gives the supplier a higher profit if the operational cost of group buying is below a threshold.Furthermore,the fairness concern behavior of the retailers does not always hurt the profit of the supplier.Specifically,the supplier will benefit from the fairness concern behavior of the retailers in individual purchasing when the retailers operates in a relatively poor environment.Finally,market competition between the two fairness concerned retailers does not always benefit the supplier.Fierce competition between the fairness concerned retailers reduces the supplier's profit if the group buying strategy is used when the retailers operates in a relatively poor environment.