Strategy identifies two primary sets of processes through which the firm creates value for its customers by moving goods and information through marketing channels: demand-focused and supply-focused processes. Historically, firms have invested resources to develop a core differential advantage in one or other of these areas-but rarely in both-often resulting in mismatches between demand (what customers want) and supply (what is available in the marketplace). This paper suggests that successfully managing the supply chain to create customer value requires extensive integration between demandfocused processes and supply-focused processes that is based on a foundation of value creation through intraorganizational knowledge management. Integrating demand and supply processes helps firms prioritize and ensure fulfillment based upon the shared generation, dissemination, interpretation and application of real-time customer demand as well as ongoing supply capacity constraints. We draw upon literature in marketing, logistics, supply chain management and strategy to introduce a conceptual framework of demand and supply integration (DSI). We also offer insights for managerial practice and an agenda for future research in the relatively under-researched, but strategically important, area of demand and supply integration.

Many firms now place emphasis on leveraging logistics capabilities as a source of competitive advantage. This manuscript suggests that the key to sustaining this competitive position is through adopting learning principles in logistics. As such, a logistics learning capability framework is presented, including the components of an effective learning‐based logistics organization. Research propositions, an in‐depth case study and implications are presented to further support the learning capability framework suggested and highlight the importance of learning in today's hypercompetitive global supply chain environment.

The Internet has provided businesses with a new channel of distribution. The development of this new channel has resulted in many new challenges for logistics decision makers in companies that sell to consumers over the Internet. Logistics and transportation service providers for these firms are now faced with many new challenges. Because consumers are increasingly using the Internet to purchase products that were originally sourced through traditional retail outlets, product delivery issues have become more salient to consumers. Logistics decision makers should focus on transportation and delivery issues as key components of online consumer satisfaction.The critical link between consumer-based Internet ordering and the delivery of the product to the consumer is often referred to as the final or last mile. The last mile, including product transportation, is frequently considered the most important element of the order fulfillment process (Bromage 2001). For example, 89% of online shoppers rate on-time delivery high in importance, second only to privacy issues (90%) (Yankelovich 2000). Additionally, 85% of buyers who receive their order on time would shop at the Internet merchant again compared to 33% who did not receive their order on time (ComputerWorld 1999). Thus, delivery-related issues have been shown to have a high level of importance to online shoppers.The continued growth of online consumer purchasing has clearly increased business-to-consumer shipments, and hence the direct-to-consumer deliveries of transportation carriers. The carrier is, in effect, the last impression of the Internet merchant's ability to fulfill an order. Therefore, the role of the carrier in the Internet transaction process is of potential tactical and/or strategic importance to logisticians within online merchant operations. However, there is little empirical research that has investigated carrier and delivery-related issues in an online purchasing context and their effects on JOURNAL

The renaming of the Council of Logistics Management (CLM) to the Council of Supply Chain Management Professionals (CSCMP) ushered in some interesting definitional dialogue and debate within the practitioner and academic communities. Inherent in emerging definitions is the notion that SCM encompasses activities traditionally considered aspects of production, logistics, marketing, and operations management. Defining SCM in such a broad scope (i.e., a “within” and “across” functions perspective), while considered by many scholars as the true representation of the essence of SCM, creates confusion regarding the appropriate organizational level within a business that is best suited for managerial decision making regarding the phenomenon. This paper contributes to the emerging SCM dialogue by highlighting the functional spaces (the “within” function perspective), relationships, and conceptual overlaps (the “across” functions perspective) between marketing, logistics, production, operations, and supply chain management. By comparing and contrasting the literature‐based conceptual boundaries of each discipline, a framework is proposed that more clearly captures the essence of the SCM decision making sphere. Managerial insights and future research implications are presented.

Purpose -The concept of supply chain orientation (SCO) has been described in multiple ways in previous research. The purpose of this paper is to integrate previous descriptions and further develop the structural element of SCO including the areas of organizational design, human resources, information technology, and organizational measurement. Design/methodology/approach -A literature review is used to identify previous descriptions of SCO and present a framework to more completely describe the concept. Findings -SCO cannot be understood without incorporating both a firm's strategic intention to compete via supply chain capabilities and the firm's internal structural elements. Research limitations/implications -This is a conceptual study undertaken to develop a comprehensive framework incorporating SCO concepts. Although the framework is developed from the existing literature, further research is necessary to test the extended view of the concept. Practical implications -The paper provides a template for understanding a firm's current SCO, and may be a useful roadmap for firms wishing to develop a greater SCO. Originality/value -Little research has been published surrounding the concept of SCO. The paper integrates previous descriptions by incorporating both strategic and structural views, and by explaining the antecedent elements internal to the firm that are required to form a SCO.

Crowdsourced delivery is a service operations model that has proliferated in recent years, bringing unique opportunities and challenges to online retail operations. In particular, new technology enabled features, such as the disclosure of delivery drivers' identities, introduce a social dimension prior to delivery service encounters that might influence customers' service quality expectations and ultimately impact their attitudes towards the retailers. Building on premises of social identity theory, this research investigates effects of various crowdsourced delivery system designs related to driver disclosure and ethnicity on customers' attitudes towards the drivers and retailers. Using data from a scenario‐based experiment with 761 participants across two studies, we find that crowdsourced delivery designs that disclose drivers' identity increase customers' trust, satisfaction, and repurchase intentions only when customers perceive the drivers to be similar to them, particularly with regard to ethnicity. The designs that offer driver choice options are also found to be highly regarded by customers. In addition, the similarity effects of crowdsourced delivery designs differ depending on certain customer characteristics. Overall, our research shows crowdsourced delivery ‐ as a technology‐driven phenomenon ‐ may portend unexpected and challenging social dilemmas for operations managers. Our findings contribute to emerging research on the intersection of service design, technology management, and the sharing economy.

T he recent growth of e-commerce technologies has disrupted the traditional retail environment, leading to more consumers shopping online. While the manner in which consumers shop is changing rapidly, our understanding of how changing consumer behaviors affect retail supply chain management is lacking. In particular, our understanding of how consumers react to stockouts in an online shopping environment remains unclear. Making the challenge even more difficult is the fact that price promotions are heavily used to attract consumers in an online retail environment where consumer switching costs are low. This research develops a theoretical framework, based on expectation-disconfirmation theory, to explain the effect of price promotions on consumer expectations of product availability and their reactions to stockouts in an online retail environment. Surprisingly, our findings suggest that consumers are actually less dissatisfied with a stockout of a price promoted item than a nonprice promoted product and are less likely to switch to another retailer's website. These findings may suggest that price promotions actually create a type of switching cost in the online retail environment, leading to interesting implications for researchers and supply chain managers.

A prevalent challenge for online retail supply chain managers is maintaining and managing adequate inventory levels to support and fulfill consumer orders and purchases. Interestingly, this challenge is not only about maintaining inventory availability, but also how to effectively disclose and communicate inventory availability, particularly if a stockout occurs. This article investigates a conceptual model that explores the impact of online inventory availability disclosure on consumer perceptions in the context of a stockout. Based on expectation disconfirmation theory, the core of the model is the notion that limited inventory availability would stimulate expected consumer competition, which in turn, causes consumers to not be as negatively impacted by stockouts. Contrary to this prediction, however, the results of this experimental study show that consumers are actually more dissatisfied when low inventory availability items are out‐of‐stock. This is likely due to the combined impacts of a stockout encounter and a “loss” of a competitive shopping scenario. Thus, implications of these findings for future research and supply chain practice are offered accordingly.