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The design of retail backroom storage areas has great impact on in-store operations, customer service level and on store life-cycle costs. Moreover, backroom storage in modern retail grocery stores is critical to several functions, such as acting as a buffer against strong demand lifts yielded by an ever-increasing promotional activity, stocking seasonal peak demand and accommodating e-commerce activities. The purpose of this paper is to propose a framework to design retail backroom storage area. Furthermore, the authors aim to draw attention to the lack of literature on this topic, while clarifying the relationship between this promising research stream and the considerable body of research regarding the design and operations of conventional warehouses, as well as retail in-store operations.

The key literature on backrooms, grocery retail, in-store operations, warehouse design and operations was reviewed. This allowed an understanding of the gap in the literature regarding the design of backrooms. Moreover, a case study methodological approach was conducted in a Portuguese retailer to extend the literature review.

Despite having functions similar to conventional warehouses, backroom storage facilities have particularities that deserve a distinct analysis. Thus, the authors stress these differences and demonstrate how they influence the development of a novel backroom design framework.

This paper fills a gap by proposing a framework to design backroom areas. Furthermore, this research may help practitioners to better design backroom areas, since this process currently lacks a formal and standardized procedure.

The purpose of this paper is to: first, provide a systematic review of the drivers of retail on-shelf availability (OSA) that have been scrutinized in the literature; second, identify areas where further scrutiny is needed; and third, critically reflect on current conceptualizations of OSA and suggest alternative perspectives that may help guide future investigations.

A systematic approach is adopted wherein nine leading journals in logistics, supply chain management, operations management, and retailing are systematically scanned for articles discussing OSA drivers. The respective journals’ websites are used as the primary platform for scanning, with Google Scholar serving as a secondary platform for completeness. Journal articles are carefully read and their respective relevance assessed. A final set of 73 articles is retained and thoroughly reviewed for the purpose of this research. The systematic nature of the review minimizes researcher bias, ensures reasonable completeness, maximizes reliability, and enables replicability.

Five categories of drivers of OSA are identified. The first four – i.e., operational, behavioral, managerial, and coordination drivers – stem from failures at the planning or execution stages of retail operations. The fifth category – systemic drivers – encompasses contingency factors that amplify the effect of supply chain failures on OSA. The review also indicates that most non-systemic OOS could be traced back to incentive misalignments within and across supply chain partners.

This research consolidates past findings on the drivers of OSA and provides valuable insights as to areas where further research may be needed. It also offers forward-looking perspectives that could help advance research on the drivers of OSA. For example, the authors invite the research community to revisit the pervasive underlying assumption that OSA is an absolute imperative and question the unidirectional relationship that higher OSA is necessarily better. The authors initiate an open dialogue to approach OSA as a service-level parameter, rather than a maximizable outcome, as indicated by inventory theory.

The search for service quality and the division of work between front office employees and backroom workers as the core of service design are examined. Discussion centres on whether the server′s task should encompass more backroom work to avoid duplication and delay or be more limited to reduce turnaround time. Alternative service delivery designs are explored and the impact of technology examined. It is concluded that the task at hand is not merely to select the best design but a technological migration path allowing the bank to maintain or improve its competitive position in what has been described as “bare‐knuckle banking”.

In order to achieve competitive advantage over the physical marketplace, the e-retailers are insisted on endowing with lenient return policies. The piece-wise returns-and-reordering process incurs excessive buffering and unwanted logistics costs which raises overall fulfillment charges. The objective of this study is to re-design e-retail distribution policy by providing temporal storage at logistics service provides' (LSP) location. The impact of recurrent returns on pricing and profit margins are also investigated over time continuum.

A framework is developed to reduce the non-value added (NVA) storage and distribution efforts by providing collaborative buffering between LSP and e-retailer. The knapsack based buffering approach is tested and compared with traditional e-retail distribution practices. The revenue sharing concept is mathematically modelled and implemented in GAMS, which finally validated through multiple return scenarios.

The proposed model outperforms the existing one under all scenarios with different configuration settings of re-ordering, profit margins, and buffer time windows. The distribution cost is found, linearly related to the necessary product buffering space. The findings help to re-design sustainable return policies for individual products so that maximum customer value can be yield with minimum costs.

This study helps to determine the NVA efforts incurred while storing and delivering multi-time returned products to ensure desired service levels. The revenue sharing model provides pricing strategies for e-retail practitioners deciding which product should store in what quantity for how much time at the shipping agency location so that it fulfils the re-ordering at least waiting and sufficient buffering.

The proposed model extends the role of LPSs as temporary buffer providers to reduce returns-and-reordering fulfilment efforts in the e-retail network. This Collaborative framework offers an opportunity to amend the distribution contracts and policies time by time that enhances e-retailer's performance and customer satisfaction.

Perceived as an antidote to poor execution, interest in radio frequency identification (RFID)-enabled visibility has grown. The purpose of this paper is to examine whether and how RFID-enabled visibility with item-level tagging improves store execution.

The authors conducted three field-based experiments in collaboration with two Fortune 500 retailers.

RFID-enabled visibility resulted in a sizable decrease in inventory record inaccuracy and out-of-stocks for inventory held in both the backroom and on the sales floor. The decrease in inventory record inaccuracy and out-of-stocks was even greater among products stored primarily on the sales floor suggesting the benefits from increased visibility accrue to sales floor inventory management processes. In contrast, the authors found no significant improvement in inventory record inaccuracy and no substantive improvement in out-of-stocks among products stored primarily in the backroom suggesting that increased visibility does not improve backroom management processes.

The authors recommend retailers focus on sales floor inventory management when seeking to improve store execution through the adoption of RFID-enabled visibility. In the context, only partial evidence exists that backroom inventory management improves with RFID-enabled visibility.

Retailers seeking to invest in RFID technology must estimate potential performance improvements before making firm-specific cost-benefit analyses. They must also understand where and how these performance improvements will accrue. This research uniquely presents the results of a three field experiments that quantify the changes in retail execution associated with RFID adoption.

The purpose of this paper is to propose a maturity model to improve warehouse performance.

This paper will follow De Bruin et al’s (2005) suggested six relevant phases: scope, design, populate, test, deploy and maintain in developing the proposed maturity model. This study concentrates on the first five phases.

The proposed warehouse maturity model can be used as descriptive, benchmarking and a prescriptive with a road map for improvement.

The warehouse maturity model was proposed to let warehouse managers evaluate their practices and assess them by maturity level. Then, the proposed warehouse maturity model can be utilized to develop a set of plans for conducting projects to improve the warehouse practices, techniques and tools.

The proposed warehouse maturity model contributes to fill the shortages of maturity model addressing the warehouse environment. In particular, it provides a useful tool to establish the overall maturity level of a warehouse system. The proposed maturity model supports strategic decisions oriented toward improvement capabilities of the warehouse and to compete based on service level provided.

This paper aims to characterize some of the operational benefits of item‐level radio‐frequency identification (RFID) in a retail environment.

The paper examines a retail store operation with backroom and shelf stock under the assumption of multiple replenishment and sales periods. Backroom stock is replenished according to a periodic‐review order‐up to policy and shelf stock is replenished continually from the backroom. Backroom replenishment decisions are made based on demand forecasts that are updated in each sales period based on previous sales. The influence of item‐level RFID is two‐fold: first, it directly affects the number of products sold through the efficiency and effectiveness of the backroom‐to‐shelf replenishment process. Second, it indirectly affects the retailer's demand forecast: ceteris paribus, more products sold mean a higher demand forecast, which means a higher order‐up to level in the backroom.

This study confirms that the direct effect of more efficient and effective backroom‐to‐shelf replenishment contributes the majority of benefits. On average, this model shows that approximately 80‐85 percent of the total RFID benefit is directly due to the backroom‐to‐shelf process, and only 15‐20 percent is due to an improvement in backroom stocking. This finding suggests that, in general, the operation of the backroom is not as crucial to the overall retail store profitability.

The model in this paper delivers further evidence of the importance of the “last several yards” in retail execution. This has important implications for retail RFID projects: most current retail RFID implementations and pilots focus on case‐ and pallet‐level RFID to ensure correct backroom stocking. Seeing, however, that this type of benefit accounts for less than 20 percent of total potential RFID benefits, it appears that current case‐ and pallet‐level implementations are merely scraping the tip of the iceberg.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the impact of backroom storage in supply chain replenishment decision parameters: the order quantity based on the well-established economic order quantity (EOQ) model.

The authors develop an EOQ-type model to investigate the operational cost impact of the order quantity with backroom storage. Because of the discrete and discontinuous nature of the problem, a modification of an existing algorithm is applied to obtain an optimal order quantity. Numerical experiments derived from a leading retailer in Thailand are used to study the cost impact of the backroom.

The paper shows that the backroom storage will significantly affect the decision regarding the order quantity. If its effect is ignored, the cost increase can be as high as 30 per cent. The costs and operations of additional shelf-refill trips from the backroom must be carefully analyzed and included in the decisions of replenishment operations.

The model is a simplified version of the actual replenishment process. Validation from a real-world setting should be used to confirm the results. There are many additional opportunities to further integrate other issues in this problem such as shelf space decisions or joint order quantity between vendors and retailers.

The insights gained from the model will help managers, both retailers and vendors or manufacturers, make better decisions with regard to the order quantity policy in the supply chain.

Problems with backroom storage have been qualitatively described in the literature in the past decade. This paper is an early attempt to develop a quantitative model to analytically study the cost impact of backroom on order quantity decisions.

Grocery sellers that have entered the online business must now carry out order fulfilment activities previously done by the customer. Consequently, in a context of online sales growth, the purpose of this study is to identify and implement best practices in order to redesign the order picking process in a retailer with a store-based model.

To identify different work alternatives, an approach is developed to analyse the methods used in distinct stores of one large Spanish grocer. The methodology employed is a three-step statistical analysis that combines ANOVA and MANOVA techniques to settle on the best alternatives in each case.

Substantial improvements can be achieved by analysing the different working methods. The three-step statistical analysis identified best practices in terms of their impact on preparation time, allowing a faster working method.

To manage business processes efficiently, online grocers that operate store-based fulfilment strategies can redesign their working method using a criterion based on their own performance.

This is one of the few contributions focusing on the improvement of e-grocery fulfilment operations by disseminating best practices through decision-making criteria. This study contributes by addressing the lack of approaches studying the order picking process by considering its various features and applying best practices.

This study was predicated on gaze behaviour in front-of-shelf orientation. The purpose of this paper is to analyse the effect of the presence (absence) of competing brands on consumer attention in front-of-shelf orientation. The effects on visual attention investigated on the shelf were eye scan path of the total available area, information acquisition in extremities and mental effort.

Two experiments were performed using eye-tracking technology. The first study was conducted in a closed and static environment. The second study was performed in an open and dynamic environment. In these studies, the authors used, as an independent variable, the arrangement of brands on shelves (presence vs absence of competing) and evaluated the variations in the visual attention through three dependent variables: eye scan path of the total available area, information acquisition in extremities and mental effort.

Three hypotheses were tested. The first hypothesis confirmed that scenarios of competitive brands are rather composed of natural complex scenes, so there is a greater number of eye fixations needed to identify and locate objects. In addition, the second hypothesis demonstrated that, in scenarios of competitive brands, there is an acceleration of information acquisitions causing an increase in peripheral vision at the ends of the shelf. Finally, the third hypothesis demonstrated that the presence of a greater attention effort in the scenario of competing brands was verified, since the mental effort variables (revisiting the shelf, noting and re-examining) were greater than in the scenario of non-competing brands.

Limitations of this study may be associated with the absence of top-down factors and a lack of results associated with evaluation and verification phases.

Gaze behaviour is susceptible to the information derived from the absence and presence of competing brands.