Blockchain-Enabled E-Commerce Supply Chain Optimization Considering Consumer Service Level Under Disruption Risks

The booming development of customized e-commerce makes e-commerce supply chains experience a severe test of consumer service level. To ensure personalized services under disruption risks, an efficient resilience-improved optimization method optimizing economic cost, order fulfillment time, and consumer service level is proposed in this paper. The method focuses on the multi-period and multi-product e-commerce supply chain optimization problem considering blockchain technology (BCT)-enabled resistance strategies and time-dependent recovery strategies simultaneously. A BCT-enabled multi-period multi-product programming model is then proposed, which (1) implements BCT into supply chain management as the resistance strategy before disruption; (2) collaborates four recovery strategies, including signing contracts with backup suppliers, uninterrupted supplier fortification, interrupted supplier’s self-healing and the hybrid strategy; (3) supports the e-tailer’s decision-making and optimizes his total costs, order fulfillment time, and consumer service level with the consideration of product priorities under disruptions. Using a real case of Chinese e-commerce under the COVID-19 epidemic as the case study, it is illustrated that (1) the performance of BCT-enabled resistance strategies and time-dependent recovery strategies in disruption risk management; (2) the applicability of BCT-enabled model in consumer service level improvement, economic cost and order fulfillment time reduction. The proposed resilience-improved optimization method could empower e-tailers’ decision-making to manage unexpected disruptions in practice.