The Role of Consumer Preferences Information Sharing in Agricultural Products Quality Improvement

ABSTRACT In recent years, agribusinesses have shifted their focus towards enhancing the quality of agricultural products. This shift is driven by consumers' growing interest in high‐quality agricultural products. However, many agribusinesses face challenges in making optimal quality improvement and production decisions due to limited access to accurate consumer information. To address this, intermediary platforms, equipped with consumer information, not only provide an opportunity for agribusinesses to directly sell their products to consumers, but also consider whether and how to share consumer information with agribusinesses. Motivated by these circumstances, this study considers the supply chain consisting of an agribusiness and an intermediary platform. We investigate the agribusiness's quality improvement strategies and the platform's information‐sharing strategy. We find that the quality improvement preferences of the agribusiness are significantly influenced by the platform's information‐sharing strategy. Without information sharing, the agribusiness tends to improve quality. However, with information sharing, the agribusiness's willingness to improve quality depends on initial product quality, acceptance level, and quality investment cost. Furthermore, improving quality boosts platform profits when the initial quality is relatively low, the quality investment cost is low, or the product is already positioned at the high end. Information sharing can further enable the platform to gain profits from the agribusiness's quality improvement. Interestingly, the platform's information‐sharing strategy also shapes the agribusiness's choices of quality improvement, facilitating a “win‐win‐win” outcome for the platform, the agribusiness, and consumers. These findings emphasize the importance of information sharing in promoting effective quality improvement, while also highlighting the critical impact of quality improvement and information sharing on the profits of platforms and the development of agribusinesses.