Impacts of agri-food e-commerce on traditional wholesale industry:Evidence from China

Rapidly expanding studies investigate the effects of e-commerce on company operations in the retail market.However,the interaction between agri-food e-commerce(AEC)and the traditional agri-food wholesale industry(AWI)has not received enough attention in the existing literature.Based on the provincial panel data from 2013 to 2020 in China,this paper examines the effect of AEC on AWI,comprising three dimensions:digitalization(DIGITAL),agrifood e-commerce infrastructure and supporting services(AECI),and agri-food e-commerce economy(AECE).First,AWI and AEC are measured using an entropy-based combination of indicators.The results indicate that for China as a whole,AWI has remained practically unchanged,whereas AEC exhibits a significant rising trend.Second,the findings of the fixed-effect regression reveal that DIGITAL and AECE tend to raise AWI,whereas AECI negatively affects AWI.Third,threshold regression results indicate that AECI tends to diminish AWI with three-stage inhibitory intensity,which manifests as a first increase and then a drop in the inhibition degree.These results suggest that with the introduction of e-commerce for agricultural product circulation,digital development will have catfish effects that tend to stimulate the vitality of the conventional wholesale industry and promote technical progress.Furthermore,the traditional wholesale industry benefits financially from e-commerce even while it diverts part of the traditional wholesale circulation for agricultural products.

Review of Food Safety Supervision for the Wholesale Market of Chinese Agricultural Products

With the continuous improvement of living standards, there is an increasingly concerned about food quality and safety issues. Especially in recent years,food safety incidents, breaking out frequently, have become the focus of people＇s attention, putting forward new demands on the regulation of food safety. This paper reviewed the Food Safety Supervision in China from food safety supervision mode,regulatory system defects and circulation supervision system, and also proposed the future research trends of food safety regulations for the wholesale market of Chinese agricultural products.

Marketing of African Walnut [Tetracarpidium conophorum Mull. （Arg）] in Southwest Nigeria： Production Issues and Contributions to Stakeholders

The survey was carried out in Ekiti, Oyo, Ogun, Ondo, and Osun states located in SW Nigeria. The respondents for the study include thirty marketers and thirty producers of African walnut randomly selected within each of the state, making a total of 60 respondents per state and 300 for the five states. Two sets of structured questionnaires were designed, one for each eatergory of the respondents. The questionnaires were designed to solicit information on demographic characteristics of the producers and marketers of African walnut, production and marketing challenges of the walnut, price trend along the marketing chain, and interraction and relationships of the middlemen. The questionnaires were administered through individual and focus group methods. Also, indepth interview of the respondents was conducted to supplement data obtained from the questionnaires. Purposive sampling method was used to select local markets where the walnut were sold for study of the price trend of the walnut for two seasons （from 2007 to 2008）. Marketing of the walnut started with farmers that plant the perennial climber on their farmland, while the marketing intermediaries include the village merchants, wholesalers, and the retailers. Adult male dominated the production sector of African walnut while processing and marketing the nuts were mostly done by the women and children. There is high demand for the walnut as delicacy and snack; although industrial usage is yet to be fully developed. Marketing of the cooked nuts and at retail quantity had the highest profit along the marketing chain. There is need for expansion of the current scale of production of the walnut to meet increasing demand. Provision of appropriate storage facilities to prevent spoilage of the product in rural areas and good rural road network for easy conveyance to urban markets where it is majorly consumed is pertinent for marketing of the walnut.

Food safety inspection and the adoption of traceability in aquatic wholesale markets: A game-theoretic model and empirical evidence

Supply chain traceability is key to reduce food safety risks,since it allows problems to be traced to their sources. Moreover,it allows regulatory agencies to understand where risk is introduced into the supply chain,and offers a major disincentive for upstream agricultural businesses engaging in economically motivated adulteration. This paper focuses on the aquatic supply chain in China,and seeks to understand the adoption of traceability both through an analytical model,and empirical analysis based on data collected through an extensive (largest ever) field survey of Chinese aquatic wholesale markets. The field survey includes 76 managers and 753 vendors,covering all aquatic wholesale markets in Zhejiang and Hunan provinces. The analytical and empirical results suggest that the adoption of traceability among wholesale market vendors is significantly associated with inspection intensity,their individual history of food safety problems,and their risk awareness. The effect of inspection intensity on traceability adoption is stronger in markets which are privately owned than in markets with state/collective ownership. The analysis offers insights into the current state of traceability in China. More importantly,it suggests several hypothesized factors that might affect the adoption of traceability and could be leveraged by regulatory organizations to improve it.

Spillover of international crude oil prices on China's refined oil wholesale prices and price forecasting:Daily-frequency data of private enterprises and local refineries

Compared with retail prices of state-owned companies used in almost all existing studies,China’s refined oil wholesale prices of private enterprises and local refineries are more affected by the market and better reflect the real supply-demand situation.For the first time,this paper applies own-monitored dailyfrequency wholesale prices of China’s private enterprises and local refineries during 2013-2020 to derive spillover effects of international crude oil prices on China’s refined oil prices through the VAR-BEKKGARCH(vector autoregression-Baba,Engle,Kraft,and Kroner-generalized autoregressive conditional heteroscedasticity)model,and then tries to forecast wholesale prices through the PCA-BP(principal component analysis-back propagation)neural network model.Results show that international crude oil prices have significant mean spillover and volatility spillover effects on China’s refined oil wholesale prices.Changes in crude oil prices are the Granger cause of changes in refined oil wholesale prices.With the improvement of China’s oil-pricing mechanism in 2016,the volatility spillover from the international crude oil market to China’s refined oil market gradually increases,and the BRENT price variation has an increasing impact on the refined oil wholesale price variation.The PCA-BP model could serve as a candidate tool for forecasting China’s refined oil wholesale prices.

Effect of contract choice on upstream carbon emission reduction considering carbon taxation

In order to curb the manufacturer’s product carbon emission levels, the leading retailer usually offers three contracts to the manufacturer, i.e., wholesale-price contract(WC), cost-sharing contract(CC) and revenue-sharing contract(RC). The results of implementing the three contracts are discussed and compared. The results reveal that as long as the government levies carbon taxations, all the three contracts can effectively stimulate the manufacturer to invest in carbon emission reduction. Among the three contracts, RC can achieve the highest level of carbon emission reduction of products and the maximum profits for both the manufacturer and retailer in a supply chain. However, the RC fails to reach the level of the centralized supply chain(CSC), thus it cannot coordinate the supply chain. The supply chain members’ contract choices are consistent. Both members prefer RC to the other two contracts. In order to effectively reduce the manufacturer’s carbon emission levels, the government should impose the highest carbon taxation level under RC, the medium carbon taxation level under CC, the lowest carbon taxation level under WC, and the same carbon taxation level as RC under the CSC.

A Group-Based Fingerprinting Scheme for Digital Wholesale and Retail

Prior group-based fingerprinting achieves better detection performance when colluders are from the same group. But in digital wholesale and needs to be identified retail, the middleman as well as customers especially against group colluding attack. The group tracing is neglected in previous works. In this paper, we propose a novel multimedia group fingerprint to trace malicious middlemen along with customers. We explore the quality of the non degenerate linear shift register sequence （NDLSRS） which is convenient in group initialization and management. The theoretic analysis and simulation experiment results show that NDLSRS has good resistance against attacks from colluding groups/ members even after its volume expanded.

Investing and Pricing with Supply Uncertainty in Electricity Market:A General View Combining Wholesale and Retail Market

Renewable energy,such as wind and solar energy,may vary signifi cantly over time and locations depending on the weather and the climate conditions.This leads to the supply uncertainty in the electricity(power) market with renewable energy integrated to power grid.In this paper,electricity in the market is classified into two types:stablesupply electricity(SSE) and unstablesupply electricity(USE).We investigate the investment and pricing strategies under the electricity supply uncertainty in wholesale and retail electricity market.In particular,our model combines the wholesale and retail market and capture the dominant players,i.e.,consumers,power plant(power operator),and electricity supplier.To derive the market behaviors of these players,we formulate the market decision problems as a multistage Stackelberg game.By solving the game model,we obtain the optimal,with closedform,wholesale investment and retail pricing strategy for the operator.We also obtain the energy supplier's best price mechanism numerically under certain assumption.We fi nd the price of SSE being about 1.4 times higher than that of USE will benefi t energy supplieroptimally,under which power plant's optimal strategy of investing is to purchase USE about 4.5 times much more than SSE.

Experiences of the Electricity System Operator Incentive Scheme in Great Britain

National Grid is the electricity system operator in Great Britain and has an unique feature in so far as it is one of the world’s few for-profit system operators. In addition, the commercially orientation of the British market rules means that nearly every action taken by National Grid to operate the system has a cost associated to it. Based on those factors and in order to encourage National Grid to seek continuous improvements and drive for efficient and economic system operation, the regulator (Ofgem) offers an incentive scheme, whereby a target is agreed annually and any savings in relation to this target are shared between consumers and National Grid in the form of a profit. It is in National Grid’s best interest to have mechanisms to mitigate the impacts of volatility in the costs it faces as system operator so that it can implement cost saving actions without the risk of windfall losses (or gains) arising from sudden changes in uncontrollable drivers. The purpose of this paper is to share the experiences of National Grid in the operation of Great Britain's electricity system, with a special interest on the mechanisms created to manage the associated costs in response to the incentive scheme. It does so by describing the market operation in Great Britain and the costs drivers impacting National Grid’s system operation and illustrating the steps recently taken by National Grid to propose volatility mitigation mechanisms. It concludes with the rationale and expected results from the latest proposals as consulted with the industry for introduction in the incentive scheme starting on 1st April 2011. It is worth noting that with this work, the authors wish to both share the experience with other system operators and regulators in the world, as well as give British market participants an insight on the inner workings of National Grid.

Evaluation on Core Competitiveness of Wholesale Market of Agricultural Products Based on CWAA Operator

According to relevant data,we select five indices,namely management ability,organization and management capability,enterprise culture,development ability and technical equipment ability,to establish the index system of core competitiveness of wholesale market of agricultural products.Based on combination weight arithmetic average(CWAA) operator,we advance an evaluation model of core competitiveness of wholesale market of agricultural products which involves participation of many people.By inviting five exerts,we conduct evaluation in terms of management ability of wholesale market of agricultural products,organization and management capability of leadership,enterprise culture of wholesale market of agricultural products,future development ability of wholesale market of agricultural products,and exiting technical equipment ability of wholesale market of agricultural products.We adopt hundred-mark system to grade and evaluate core competitiveness of wholesale market of agricultural products.The results show that the experts’ evaluation score of core competitiveness of wholesale market of agricultural products is high.The evaluation result is reasonable and authentic and this model is feasible.

Analysis on the Comparison of Vegetable Price

In 2010,the garlic,bean and ginger became more expensive than ever,which made some people's life harder.In response to such phenomena,the retail price and wholesale price at the producers' end,the retail price and wholesale price at distributors' end,and consumption related data(disposable income,consumption expenditure,fresh vegetables amount from 2004 to 2011 were compared and analyzed in this paper.Results showed that the average price(selling price,wholesale price and retail price) of five kinds of vegetables generally rose.There was certain differences in the price change range.Since 2004,especially in 2009 the vegetable prices had been so high that it had influenced the life of low income families in China.

Demand Responsive Market Decision-Makings and Electricity Pricing Scheme Design in Low-Carbon Energy System Environment

The two-way interaction between smart grid and customers will continuously play an important role in enhan-cing the overall efficiency of the green and low-carbon electric power industry and properly accommodating intermittent renewable energy resources.Thus far,the existing electricity pricing mechanisms hardly match the technical properties of smart grid;neither can they facilitate increasing end users participating in the electri-city market.In this paper,several relevant models and novel methods are proposed for pricing scheme design as well as to achieve optimal decision-makings for market participants,in which the mechanisms behind are com-patible with demand response operation of end users in the smart grid.The electric vehicles and prosumers are jointly considered by complying with the technical constraints and intrinsic economic interests.Based on the demand response of controllable loads,the real-time pricing,rewarding pricing and insurance pricing methods are proposed for the retailers and their bidding decisions for the wholesale market are also presented to increase the penetration level of renewable energy.The proposed demand response oriented electricity pricing scheme can provide some useful operational references on the cooperative operation of controllable loads and renewable energy through the feasible retail and wholesale market pricing methods,and thereby enhancing the development of the low-carbon energy system.

Should State Capital Withdraw from Competitive Sectors?——An Analysis Based on the Efficiency of SOEs in the Wholesale Sector

That SOEs are inefficient is still a consensus in most economic literature. However, in recent studies, more and more arguments are made in favor of the efficiency of SOEs, yet existing empirical studies are mostly based on production industry data as samples. On the basis of adopting distribution samples and conducting a cross-sector comparison between the production industry and the distribution sector, this paper offers a multi-perspective empirical assessment on the efficiency of SOEs. Through the analysis of major JTnancial indicators and adopting the Data Envelopment Analysis-Malmquist index for total factor productivity comparison, we find that SOEs generally do not have any disadvantage in efficiency and their superior efficiency is particularly pronounced in the distribution sector as compared with production industry. Moreover, the high share and high efficiency of state capital in the wholesale sector needs particular attention. This paper employs case studies to reveal the positive correlation between the assets-heavy operation of state-owned wholesale firms and their profitability. The implications are as follows： policymakers must deliberate prudently before deciding to withdraw or increase state capital in various sectors; in the wholesale sector where state capital is more efficient, the functions of state capital can be bolstered by increasing its presence in the sector,＂ the notion that state capital must be withdrawn from competitive sectors cannot be adopted likely, nor should the benefits of asset-light operation be exaggerated.

Zoo Fashion Wholesale Market; Doota Fashion Wholesale Market; Beijing; Seoul

Taking two nation-wide famous fashion wholesale markets for case study, i.e. Zoo Market in Beijing and Doota Market in Seoul,a comparative study is carried out on the fashion wholesale markets of Beijing and Seoul. The history, general situation,surrounding environments and characteristics of the markets in the two cities are introduced and analyzed. The sameness anddifferences are compared. Suggestions are put forward to Beijing fashion wholesale market according to the disadvantagescompared with Seoul.

Statistical Analysis of Defective Items of Pharmaceutical Wholesale Enterprises

Objective To provide some references and suggestions for promoting the healthy development of pharmaceutical wholesale enterprises,improving the scientific supervision level of the drug regulatory department and ensuring the quality of drugs in the circulation.Methods Retrieving the items on the official websites of the national and provincial drug regulatory departments from 2017 to 2019 that didn’t meet the requirements of the 2016 edition of the Good Supplying Practice in pharmaceutical wholesale enterprises under various inspections,the defective items were summarized and analyzed,and further study of the changes of defective items was conducted.Results and Conclusion 908 pharmaceutical wholesale enterprises had definite defective items,and 218 items violated the Guidelines for On-site Inspection of the Good Supplying Practice,with a cumulative frequency of 3874 defects.Defective items with high-frequency mainly occurred in storage and maintenance,facilities and equipment,personnel and training,general rules and sales.The average defect frequency in each pharmaceutical wholesale enterprises increased year by year,but the proportion of serious defective items decreased significantly.It is recommended that based on improving drug quality,pharmaceutical wholesale enterprises should strengthen personnel training to enhance their awareness of quality responsibility.Besides,the drug regulatory department should increase inspection and crackdown on illegal business operations and the deception of pharmaceutical wholesale enterprises.

Research on Risk Identification of Supply Chain Management in Pharmaceutical Wholesale Enterprises——Taking Enterprise A as an Example

Objective To study the current situation of supply chain management in pharmaceutical wholesale enterprises so that supply chain risks can be identified effectively.Methods Through the analysis of the actual situation of enterprise A,combining with the supply chain problem of the enterprise,the enterprise supply chain risks were found out.Results and Conclusion With the development of pharmaceutical circulation industry,the competition among drug wholesalers has become increasingly fierce.For enterprises,the supply chain risks are increasing,and the traditional upstream and downstream supply risks are transformed into multiple-dimensional risks.The goal of carrying out supply chain risk identification in pharmaceutical wholesale enterprises is to enable key enterprises to discover and understand different types of risks in time so as to improve the management of supply chain.

Status and economics of fish markets in Rajshahi City Corporation of Rajshahi,Bangladesh

Objective:To understand the existing fish distribution and marketing systems,assess marketing costs and margins and identify constraints of fish marketing systems.Methods:Data were collected from three different markets by fishermen,commission agents,wholesalers,retailers,day laborers etc.through questionnaire interviews and participatory approach during June to September,2013.Results:Four types of marketing channel were identified from farmers to consumers in all the three fish markets through a number of intermediaries.The daily supply of total fish in Binodpur Market,Talaimari Market and Shaheb Market was estimated 0.8-1 ton,0.2-0.3 ton and 8-8.1 ton,respectively.Virtually,most of the fish(75%)is imported from outside;the local supply amount is only 25%.The total marketing cost of wholesalers and retailers of the three markets were$8.58 and$6.47 per day,respectively.The average marketing margin of the wholesalers and retailers of the three markets were$0.18 and$0.25 per kg respectively.Income of fisherman,wholesaler,retailer and day laborer was estimated at$350,$9.75,$6.48,and$1.69,respectively.Conclusions:Traders have broadly improved their food consumption,standards of living,purchasing power,choice and ability as an economic sector.

COORDINATING A TWO-ECHELON SUPPLY CHAIN THROUGH DIFFERENT CONTRACTS UNDER PRICE AND PROMOTIONAL EFFORT-DEPENDENT DEMAND

Retail price and promotional effort are two important parameters on which demand of a commodity largely depends. This paper develops and analyzes a two-echelon supply chain where market demand depends on both retail price and sales effort. The centralized model is studied as the benchmark case, and the wholesale price-only contract is studied as the base case in which each entity tries to maximize its individual profit. Different contract mechanisms are implemented to outperform the base case in terms of both total chain＇s as well as individual profits. Comparisons among the coordinating contracts are provided so that any entity may choose the better one from available contracts after the contract parameters are negotiated. The model is extensively examined through a numerical example.

How to Implement the Wholesale Price Contract: Considering Competition between Supply Chains

In this paper,we develop the price competition model of two supply chains,in which each supply chain includes one core manufacturer and one retailer,respectively.The manufacturer in each supply chain sells products to the retailer through a commonly-used wholesale price contract.Each manufacturer has two options to implement the wholesale price contract:playing the Stackelberg game with the retailer and playing the bargaining game with the retailer.Based on the manufacturer's two alternative performing modes in each supply chain,we consider four combined performing modes of two competitive supply chains in the model.By comparing equilibrium results,we find that when both manufacturers choose to bargain with retailers,the sales volume increases and the sales price decreases.Moreover,the manufacturers'mode option is affected by bargaining power,product quality level,and the cost of improving product quality.Specifically,when both bargaining power and the cost of improving product quality are relatively small,both manufacturers choose to play Stackelberg game with retailers.When manufacturers'bargaining power is sufficiently large,regardless of the cost of improving product quality,both manufacturers choose to bargain with retailers.Surprisingly,when the manufacturer chooses to bargain the wholesale price with the retailer,higher product quality is not always beneficial to the retailer because the retailer may have to share part of the cost of the manufacturer.

Yiwu-A City With Unlimited Business Opportunities

Known as the largest wholesale market of small commodities in the world, Yiwu in east east China's Zhejiang Province sells more than 2.1 million kinds of commodities in 26 categories. With more than 75,000 business stands in the market, which covers over 6.4 million square meters, Yiwu s commodities reach more than 210 countries and regions, with 65 percent of its sales targeted at the international market. E-commerce in Yiwu is booming with more than 310,000 e-commerce accounts, ranking No.l and No.2 in terms of the density of e-commerce dealers in domestic and international trade respectively.