Effect of High-Quality Thirty-Party Logistics on a Retailer With Delivery Uncertainty

Third-party logistics (3 PLs) providers with low service quality often face delivery uncertainty risks, leading to decreased consumer satisfaction and resulting in refunds. Retailers can mitigate the negative effects of these uncertainties by incorporating high-quality 3 PLs. However, the strategic implications of introducing high-quality 3 PLs for both retailers and low-quality 3 PLs remain underexplored. To address this gap, we develop a Stackelberg game-theoretic model to investigate the effect of introducing a high-quality 3 PL on retailer and high-quality 3 PL decision-making. Using backward induction to obtain the Nash equilibrium, we analyze strategic interactions under two scenarios: without and with the high-quality 3 PL. The results show that, under certain conditions—namely, when the retailer faces a moderate proportion of first shipment with the low-quality 3 PL and the transportation price of the high-quality 3 PL is low, or when the proportion of first shipment with the low-quality 3 PL is high—the introduction of the high-quality 3 PL can create a win–win–win outcome for the retailer, the low-quality 3 PL, and consumers. Furthermore, the introduction of the high-quality 3 PL leads to both the higher retail price for the retailer and the higher transportation price for the low-quality 3 PL. With the high-quality 3 PL, the transportation price of the low-quality 3 PL decreases as the transportation price of the high-quality 3 PL increases. In addition, we find that when considering an uncertainty penalty for the low-quality 3 PL, the introduction can also achieve a win–win–win result for all three parties. Finally, we extend other possible scenarios in the appendix to verify the robustness of our conclusions.