Abstract: The loss of fresh produce after post-production is very high, and both the whole life-cycle freshness keeping efforts and shelf service effort can effectively improve the fresh produce supply chain performance. However, firms need to weight the cost investments and benefit returns associated with efforts. In this paper, the market demand is assumed to be a joint function of freshness-keeping levels and shelf service levels. A mathematical model and numerical simulation are used to investigate the fresh produce supply chain's globally optimal decision-making and system coordination. First, a centralized decision model is constructed, which provides a reference benchmark for the decentralized decisions of suppliers and retailers; then, a sequential game model of suppliers and retailers is discussed; finally, a coordinative contract is constructed from a firm Pareto improvement perspective. The investigation shows that the global optimal freshness-keeping levels and the shelf service levels exist uniquely, but each participating firm is motivated to deviate from the globally optimal decision from its own profit-optimal perspective. Therefore, a coordinated contract with both revenue sharing and cost-bearing attributes is designed. The decision-making behavior of the firms converges to the globally optimal decision of the supply chain, and each firm achieves Pareto improvement. Parametric sensitivity analysis of optimal profit shows that optimal global profit is negatively correlated with some key parameters (such as price sensitivity coefficient, price retail price, natural decay coefficient, and lead time). However, the optimal global profit is positively correlated with the freshness sensitivity coefficient and shelf life service sensitivity coefficient. The results indicate that moderately reducing prices or inducing consumers to reduce price sensitivity is a way to improve system profits. Meanwhile, increasing the speed of fresh produce transfer in the logistics system is also beneficial to improve overall profits. The management insights provide a reference for reducing post-production losses of fresh agricultural products and improving the profitability of the supply chain system.

Key words: fresh produce supply chain; freshness-keeping effort; shelf life service; supply chain contract