Layered Market Intelligence System

In recent years, scholars and practitioners have discussed several challenges related to the fresh-food supply chains (SCs). One of these challenges is the lack of availability of curated, clean, and processed market information for the SC participants to use to aid in their decision-making process. For example, small growers often feel uncertain because they have very little insight into which crops to plant such that they will have a market to sell them to. As such, some growers are only able to sell parts of their harvest or decide not to harvest at all which causes food waste. Hence, this work aims to create a centralized market intelligence platform with the goal of acquiring market information, curating it, analyzing it, and connecting this platform to the rest of an emerging intelligent supply chain. It is essential to take into consideration market intelligence to reduce losses related to market prices and demands, avoid scarcity events in which food availability and affordability decrease, and aid small growers by alerting them of future market opportunities A market intelligence layered system framework is developed in this work to collect relevant market indicator data including non-traditional data sources, monitor them, diagnose the market's state, and provide recommendations to the SC participants such as which crops and markets will be most promising in the future. Finally, the monitoring analysis of the proposed layered system framework is showcased via a case study conducted in a real event related to celery terminal market prices in the United States.