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Research studies have attributed customer shift from offline to online retail to primarily functional reasons. Indian retailing differs from western counterparts in terms of structure and socio-cultural-historical-economic context. The purpose of this paper is to find whether this shift is instigated by positive or negative drive.

The data were collected through group discussions and reflective experiential accounts in the form of text. The textual material was thematically analyzed to develop thematic networks. By this method, the text’s patent structures were explored, and underlying hidden patterns were identified.

Two global themes of “volition” and “violation” were discovered. At the patent level, customers are attracted to online in volition as it allows them to move to higher or desired value space. However, at the deeper level, customer shifted to online as a means to escape from violations involved in human-to-human dealings with offline retailers.

The way forward for offline retailers is to build their advantage based on human interactions. The salvation of offline retailing does not lie in trying to beat online retailers on their position of strength but in leveraging interactions to build social capital.

This study sought to explore and apprehend the meaning of customer shift from offline to online retail at deeper psycho-socio-cultural level.

Reverse logistics (RL) is a strategic instrument across industries. The rapid evolution of online marketplaces has led to frequent product returns with variations across diversified businesses. These marketplaces have caused potential losses due to fraudulent returns, hence requiring a commitment of resources to RL. With information systems (IS) playing a role in improved supply chain performance, the purpose of this paper is to analyse the impact of a conceptualized IS framework on achieving RL strategic outcomes, under the individual moderating influence of resource commitment (RC) and return frequency.

Data have been collected through a questionnaire from top to middle management executives managing the supply chain, logistics and IS. Moderated regression analysis was conducted on the collected sample using Hayes’ (2013) process modeling.

The study depicts that IS capability, IS for logistics, IS partnership quality and IS for value addition lead to RL strategic benefits. Also, return frequency and RC act as relatively strong moderators with a negative impact. When analyzed for the individual IS constructs, RC has a stronger moderating impact than return frequency.

The IS usage framework can be used effectively by practitioners for enhancing strategic RL performances depending on variations in committed resources and return frequency for individual industries.

The study proposes an IS usage framework for achieving enhanced RL strategic outcomes and emphasizes on the moderating role played by RC and return frequency for producing the results.

The purpose of this paper is to evaluate the suitability of cloud computing for small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) in India.

Literature review is used to identify benefits, challenges, and factors concerning usage and adoption of cloud computing by SMEs. A conceptual framework was developed based on the existing theoretical models and factors identified from the literature. A survey based on questionnaire method was followed to collect data from 121 manufacturing SMEs in India. The conceptual framework was refined by using factor analysis, and multiple regression analysis was used to test the hypotheses.

Major benefits of cloud computing for SMEs include cost advantage, easy deployment process, easier access to latest information and communication technologies, automatic updates and upgrades, scalability, flexibility, and improved disaster recovery and back-up capabilities. The concern area includes perceived loss of control, vendor lock-in, security issues, reliability and availability issues, and internet connectivity and speed. The factors that are found significant include perceived benefits, top management support, competitive pressure, and perceived concerns. The model explained 73 percent of cloud computing adoption.

The study is expected to make significant contribution toward body of knowledge pertaining to information technology adoption in SMEs.

The study is expected to provide SMEs an insight into real benefits and challenges associated with adopting cloud computing. The model can help SMEs in evaluating their readiness for adopting cloud computing and can ensure successful outcome of cloud computing adoption in SMEs. Providers are also going to be benefited through their enhanced understanding of SMEs’ requirements.

The proposed framework incorporates all the relevant factors including perceived benefits, perceived concerns, and other organizational and environmental factors to improve model’s predictive power.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the mediating role of process simplification on the relationship between process integration and upstream supply chain flexibility in Indian automotive organizations.

The three-step mediation analysis was performed using SPSS macro PROCESS to assess the mediating role of process simplification on the relationship between process integration constructs: top management commitment and supplier relationship; and upstream supply chain flexibility.

The results indicate a complete mediation effect of process simplification between supplier relationship and upstream supply chain flexibility, while partial mediation effect is noticed between top management commitment and upstream supply chain flexibility.

For Indian automotive managers, the study suggests that for improving the upstream supply chain flexibility, organizations must have a strategy towards improving the simplification of supply chain processes by upgrading technology and providing training to their suppliers. This understanding will help the automotive managers to simplify their upstream supply chain processes for gaining competitive positioning and maximizing the organizational profit.

This study has considered the mediating role of process simplification (a relatively less studied variable) specifically in the context of its impact on upstream supply chain flexibility. Also, the presented study explores this role in the Indian automotive domain which further enhances its value for both practitioners and researchers alike.

The purpose of this paper is to identify and rank the contextual relationship among the quality management (QM) constructs for manufacturing and its related service organizations providing integrated value bundles, which has got limited research attention.

The QM constructs of manufacturing and services are selected by performing the citation analysis. Studies related to manufacturing and service are selected by reviewing their citations index in the three major research databases namely ProQuest, Scopus and Google Scholar. The subjective responses from both industry and academia are taken in order to gain better understanding of the contextual relationship among the QM constructs. Finally, an integrated model is proposed using Micmac analysis and Interpretive Structural Modeling (ISM).

The citation analysis lead to identification of 12 QM constructs: top management commitment, supplier relationship management, human resource management, strategic focus, customer focus, quality of information sharing, process management, servicescape, employee involvement, service quality, supply chain flexibility and customer satisfaction. The expert opinions of executives in the automotive industry and academia resulted in the development of contextual relationships among the identified QM constructs for the development of an ISM model, which is a major contribution of this study.

The unique focus of this study is on analyzing the contextual relationship among QM aspects in manufacturing and services as clubbed offering. The researchers in the existing literature have so far differentiated between manufacturing and services but this study integrates the QM constructs for manufacturing and its associated services through expert feedback and proposes an ISM model.