Under traditional spot-sale strategies, the perishability and demand uncertainty of fresh agricultural products often result in market share erosion and profit losses for retailers. To address this challenge, this study constructs and compares decision models under different combinations of ordering modes and sales strategies. Specifically, for ordering modes, retailers can choose between wholesale ordering and option ordering as their ordering mode, while for sales strategies, they can select either presale or spot sale based on consumer presale preference. The study aims to identify the conditions for implementing presales, examine the impact mechanism of option ordering on presales, and analyze differences in market share and expected profit across various ordering–sales strategy combinations. The results reveal the following: (1) presales outperform spot sales in market share and expected profit only when consumer presale preference exceeds a critical threshold, which is higher under option ordering; (2) compared to wholesale ordering, option ordering reduces the incremental market share and profit gains from presales but allows retailers adopting presales to achieve higher expected profits; (3) once the critical threshold for presale implementation is met, the presale strategy under wholesale ordering facilitates faster market share capture, whereas the presale strategy under option ordering maximizes retailer profits. Furthermore, retailers can lower the threshold for implementing presales and expand their applicability by optimizing freshness-keeping efforts or adjusting option contract parameters.
Zhao et al. (Wed,) studied this question.