When the freshness of the firm's food is not observable, consumers may experience psychological feelings of elation or disappointment when the perceived actual freshness exceeds or falls short of their initial expectations. This paper investigates the firm's optimal selling strategies considering the consumer reference freshness effect in a fresh food supply chain. We consider two selling modes: the dual-channel retailing strategy (DCRS) mode in which the retailer sells food to consumers from store and online, and the omni-channel buy-online-and-pick-up-in-store (BOPS) mode in which the retail...
