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The purpose of this paper is to examine the development of rice supply chain in the context of the role of rice farmer organizations and cooperative networks in Thailand.

Primary data were solicited from the cooperatives and members of cooperatives for this study through questionnaire administration. The questionnaire containing a five-point Likert scale was posed to respondents to ascertain their problems before and after joining the network (for cooperative) and after joining the cooperative (for members). This study employed the independent two-sample student t-test (two-tailed) to test for significant difference in the means of scores regarding the problems of cooperatives before and after the cooperative network, and also to test for significant difference in the means of scores of the problems of members of the cooperatives before and after joining the cooperative.

The study revealed that key production and marketing problems such as increased transaction costs and market uncertainties confronting the cooperative organizations have been diminished as a result of the networks. Key problems of the members of the cooperatives such as exploitation and opportunistic behavior of traders to whom they sell their products have been reduced as a result of joining the cooperatives.

This paper is not without caveat. The governance structures in relation to leadership, financial arrangements and bargaining power balance have not been analyzed in this study and these are avenues for further research.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this study is the first that examined the combined roles of farmer organizations and cooperative networks in developing the rice supply chain in Thailand.

The purpose of this paper is to explore key attributes of organic rice that consumers use in the process of choosing organic rice, and to segment organic rice market in Bangkok. Moreover, the study tends to identify the best clustering techniques, between latent class cluster analysis (LCCA) and traditional cluster analysis (CA), for precise segmentation.

Best–worst scaling (BWS) method was applied to measure the level of relative importance of organic rice attributes. Then, LCCA and CA techniques were applied to recognize market segmentation. Finally, homogeneity and heterogeneity of the resulting clusters were determined to compare performance of the two clustering techniques.

The LCCA technique was identified better than the CA in classification of consumers. According to LCCA solution, the organic rice market in Bangkok (Thailand) consisted of six distinct clusters, which can be grouped into three categories based on consumers’ profile. Organic rice consumer categories were identified as “Art of eating” and “Superior quality seeker” clusters focusing on special features and quality of the organic rice; consumer category “Basic concern” cluster heavily relied on organic certification logo and manufacturing information; and other consumer categories were “Price driven,” “Eyes on price” and “Thorough explorer” clusters.

This study first applies BWS score to examine consumers’ preference for organic rice attributes and segments market, providing results for practical use for retailers, producers and marketers.

Supply chain network is complicated to manage due to the involvement of a number of agents. Formation of virtual organization using Industry 4.0 (I4.0) is an approach to improve the efficiency and effectiveness and to overcome the complexities of the channel. However, the task of managing the channel further becomes complicated after incorporating sustainability into the supply chain. To fill this gap, this paper focuses on designing of mechanism and demonstration of I4.0-based virtual organization to coordinate sustainable supply chain.

In this paper, we model and compare I4.0-based virtual organization models using four other traditional contracts with centralized supply chain. The non-cooperative game theoretic approach has been used for the analysis of models.

Our game-theoretic analysis shows that investment in I4.0 and sustainable innovation are beneficial for the overall supply chain. Our results show that linear two-part tariff contract and I4.0-based virtual organization model can perfectly coordinated with the supply chain.

This study consider deterministic model settings with full information game. Therefore researchers are encouraged to study I4.0-based coordination models under information asymmetry and uncertain situations.

The paper includes implications for the development of I4.0-based coordination model to tackle the problems of channel coordination.

This study proposes I4.0-based game-theoretic model for the sustainable supply chain coordination.