Bikash Koli Dey

Dual-channel retailing empowers the manufacturer to benefit from market opportunities by producing customized items that fulfill client requirements. The manufacturer and retailer sell customized products, which allow customers to express their chosen style to increase both the likelihood of customers making a purchase and their level of satisfaction with the product. This trend is demonstrated by the current study, in which customized consumer items are considered through online and offline channels. On the other hand, cybersecurity has become a crucial aspect of the digital era, ensuring the protection of sensitive data, networks, and systems from cyberattacks and unauthorized access. This study develops with a modern cybersecurity framework to protect against cyberattacks and increase customer trust. This model is based on customized product design, cybersecurity investment, advertisement investment, and increasing the green level of customized products. The model is solved using both centralized policy and vertical Nash policy. Numerical results indicate that centralized profit is 2.37% more than the decentralized profit. Without investing in customized products and cybersecurity, the profit of the supply chain decreases by 2.33% and 1.99% for the centralized method, 1.28% and 1.15% for the vertical Nash method for the retailer, and 1.85% and 1.38% for the vertical Nash method for the manufacturer.

Growing consumer preference for environmentally conscious brands underscores the importance of sustainable practices in retail. The present study demonstrates the combined impact of carbon regulation policies and customer care service quality on operational efficiency, sustainability, and customer satisfaction within smart multi-channel retailing under an intelligent production process. Owing to the real-world applicability of the model, the demand is considered as a function of advertising, channels’ selling prices, and investment in product greenness. Furthermore, the model incorporates intelligent autonomous inspection to minimize waste generation through proper imperfection detection. Flexibility in the manufacturing process and automation investment increase the profit by 2.36% by reducing waste generation. Numerical experiments and sensitivity analyses ensure enhanced customer care services can increase retail system profitability by 82.13% while advertising and green investment contribute a 57.38% profit increase by increasing product demand. The study’s findings claim that carbon cap-and-trade regulation policy yields the highest profitability. These findings provide remarkable insights for retailers to balance environmental responsibility with economic performance in a multi-channel environment.

The occurrence of the fourth industrial revolution (Industry 4.0) has led many industries to the path of adopting new technologies. Such technologies include blockchain, artificial intelligence (AI), and the Internet of Things (IoT). Blockchain creates the opportunity to access data and information in a decentralized manner, resulting in increased customer satisfaction. This study develops a smart newsvendor model of the food industry with consignment contracts and blockchain technology. Under a consignment policy, the central division (manufacturer) can utilize the retailer’s warehouse for storage. The producer may also have the opportunity to share the holding cost with retailers without losing the ownership of products. The main contribution of this study is to analyze the profitability of the retailing and supply chain when the blockchain technology is implemented by the food industry. Moreover, a thorough investigation of profit and loss is conducted under a consignment contract when uncertain demand is encountered. This study mainly concerns perishable food items, and increasing volatility in market demand. Two cases of probabilistic uncertainty are considered, including uniform and normal distribution. The key investigations of this study are presented in terms of (a) the effect of adopting blockchain on market demand for the food industry, (b) analysis of company profitability for perishable food items and demand uncertainty, and (c) the effect of the consignment contract under blockchain technology in the food industry. Finally, this research develops an optimization tool to numerically analyze the effect of several factors of the blockchain technology on demand. Moreover, the optimal values of the design variables and the resulting maximum profitability provide valuable insights that support industry in formulating effective policies and making informed strategic decisions.