Search results

This paper aims to explore the conditions in a business-to-business-to-consumer (B2B2C) context characterized by new technologies. Innovations enhance disintermediation and pursue sustainability goals that drive customers’ willingness to use eco-friendly delivery options, namely, parcel lockers – in e-commerce and their impacts in terms of communication and transparency along the supply network.

The study conducted an extensive survey in Italy and Germany, collecting 1,010 usable responses. Structural equation modelling was used to analyse the data with the aim of identifying the factors that drive customers’ willingness to use parcel lockers and the effect on customers’ behaviour as determined by the disclosure of information about the environmental performance of different delivery options.

The results highlight several factors affecting the willingness to use parcel lockers, namely, performance and effort expectancy, social influence, technology anxiety, hedonistic motivation and environmental knowledge. The results also demonstrate that the disclosure of information about the environmental performance of different delivery options influences customers’ behaviour.

This paper faces several limitations, mostly related to the focus on just two countries, the use of cross-sectional data and the survey’s explicit reference to just one type of product. Nevertheless, the findings contribute to the discussion on the relevance of information sharing along the supply chain, providing favourable evidence in this regard. It also improves the stream of research concerning technology adoption in the context of e-commerce, highlighting factors that can lead consumers to use eco-friendly self-service technologies.

The results can support companies in understanding how they can design and manage the last mile of delivery to jointly achieve customer satisfaction, process efficiency and superior environmental performance.

This pioneering contribution studies the adoption of delivery solutions for e-commerce and its implications for the supply network.

This paper explores the most recent contributions to interpreting customer-driven supply chains (CDSCs) under the IMP lens, focusing on the main characteristics that emerged from a review of the relevant literature. The purpose of this paper is to offer a holistic interpretative framework of major topics covered by the CDSC literature, highlighting both some shared issues and emerging elements using the IMP conceptual framework’s ARA (actor bonds, activity links and resource ties) model.

The paper reviewed the literature by searching selected journals using a combination of specific keywords in order to find the most recent contributions on the CDSC theme. The presented analysis allowed an interpretation of the findings through a conceptual framework.

The findings suggest that the ARA model could be a useful method through which to structure an interpretation of the most recent contributions, in both IMP and the general literature, on the discipline. In particular, three streams of research were identified: the customer closeness strategy, relational strategy, and intra-organizational strategy.

These clusters can be deeply analyzed using the major knowledge on CDSC dynamics. By studying these issues in an integrated way, the implications in terms of competition, generalization of results, constraints, problems, and difficulties of the customer-driven approach could be enhanced. Limitations are the restricted period of time and the absence of empirical research.

Each identified cluster presents the tools that have to be improved in order to implement the customer-driven orientation, which increases the performance and brings an added value for the same supply chain. For this reason, an emerging need is to develop studies on the empirical side that consider the implications in terms of an integrated framework among the three issues.

The paper increases the understanding of CDSCs by using conceptual and interpretative tools developed by the IMP literature. The ARA model allows the creation of a conceptual framework that clarifies, in a holistic way, the most important characteristics that have to be developed in order to improve the CDSC perspective. Recommendations and a research agenda for the implementation of the customer-driven view are derived.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the topic of customer integration into supply chains. Particular attention is focused on literature concerning customer-driven and customer-centric supply chains. The aim is to provide a deeper understanding of these two approaches, clarify the differences, compare them and provide a conceptual model and research propositions, leading to theoretical and managerial implications.

The paper presents a systematic literature review conducted using a consolidated methodology. The protocol used allows for the identification, analysis, synthesis, reporting and discussion of the results stemming from the literature on customer integration into the supply chain. This analysis enables us to summarize the results in a conceptual framework and introduce new research propositions.

Using the results of the literature review, the authors first systematized the literature on customer-driven supply chain and on customer-centric supply chain in the conceptual framework. For each of the two sets of studies, the authors highlighted three main streams of research concerning customer integration into the supply chain. The authors analyzed three different topics: why customer integration is needed, how customer integration takes place and which intra-organizational issues are necessary to implement customer integration into the supply chain. Second, the authors developed a conceptual framework to confront customer-driven and customer-centric approaches to supply chain management in an evolutionary perspective. The authors thus formulated research propositions aimed at entering in greater depth the management of the shift from the customer-driven to customer-centric supply chain.

The systematic literature analysis developed in the paper contributed to more integrated and comprehensive knowledge of customer integration into the supply chain. The paper identifies and describes the characteristics of different supply chain approaches through the organization and interpretation of academics’ contributions. The paper suggests the need for further research in at least three areas: the study of variables supporting customer-driven or customer-centric approaches, the relevant intra-organizational issues underscoring the customer-centric supply chain and the impact of digitalization on supply chain processes.

The paper outlines the main structural elements that compose the customer-driven and customer-centric supply chains. The results of the systematic analysis of the literature can be used to inform managers about the different levels and approaches for achieving customer integration. These diverse configurations of customer integration imply administrative and organizational considerations. Major issues to be considered when managers want to integrate the customer into the supply chain are identified. In addition, conditions underscoring different options – namely, customer-driven and customer-centric supply chains – are provided.

The originality of this work lies in the systematic review of literature examining customer integration into supply chains, which highlights two main levels of customer integration: customer-driven and customer-centric. The main contribution is the formulation of a conceptual framework and new research propositions from the comparison and merger of these two configurations. The information presented in this paper enhances the literature on recent developments in customer integration, thereby enabling managers to select the most suitable configuration for the supply chain structure.