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Recent literature indicates there has been an absence of top management involvement in the development of customer service policies and integration of these policies into the organizational decision making process. This paper discusses the importance of integrating customer service activities into the decision making process of today’s manufacturing organizations and thus enhancing development of an organization’s competitive advantage. Just‐in‐time systems and new technologies (product, process and information) provide the mechanisms for integration of the various activities across the supply chain. Porter’s value system concept is presented as the framework for integrating a firm’s activities within the supply chain and improving their performance.

This paper compares and contrasts forward and reverse logistics in a retail environment, with the focus on the reverse flow of product. Many differences between forward and reverse flows of logistics systems are presented. The impact of these factors depends to some extent on the supply chain position of a firm. Unlike much reverse logistics research, which is written from the perspective of the firm which will remanufacture or refurbish the product in the reverse flow, we consider the issues from the perspective of the firm generating the reverse flow.

Despite the proven benefits of high‐performing spare parts logistics, recommendations on how to organize spare parts logistics in China are rather rare. The absence of spare parts logistics concepts for China is surprising, since the spare part business is the profit pool of the capital goods industry: spare parts create about 17 percent of the industry's total revenue. The margins involved in this spare parts revenue are, on average, 25 percent compared to 2‐3 percent of the capital goods. This paper aims to offer recommendations to increase spare parts logistics performance.

The authors conducted an extensive benchmarking project with a variety of firms (focus group and single case study) in order to gain a better understanding of spare parts logistics in China. By reviewing the first benchmarking findings with a single company that struggled to achieve sufficient spare parts logistics performance, additional insight was gained into how spare parts logistics should be organized in China.

The paper attempts to provide a better understanding of the necessary changes for improving logistics performance in the Chinese market. It analyzes the necessary changes to achieve a cutting‐edge logistics solution, and shows how companies can implement the solution.

Research limitations come from the qualitative nature of the research.

Managers can use the results obtained in this study to challenge their current logistics practices and develop a project procedure on how to initiate logistics projects that lead to cutting‐edge logistics performance.

Rather than concentrating on performance benchmarks of the supply chain of spare parts or specific aspects of spare parts management, the paper develops the setting up of a cutting‐edge logistics solution for China and Asia. The cutting‐edge solution is based on two main pillars: companies should try to develop logistics solutions for Asia that consider existing Asian and Chinese constraints instead of taking the logistics practices used in mature markets and trying to adapt them to the Chinese market, and the development of the logistics solution should be in intensive collaboration with the logistics providers.

This paper provides a comparison of users and providers of third‐party logistics (3PL) services with respect to relationship marketing elements, such as trust and communication, as well as relationship marketing outcomes, such as retention and recovery.

Constructs for the relationship marketing elements and outcomes were derived from the extant literature and modified to reflect the nature of 3PL arrangements. The relevant data were collected from separate, but consistent, mail surveys that were sent to users of 3PL services as well as providers of 3PL services.

The results indicate statistically significant differences between 3PL users and providers across eight of nine relationship marketing elements, with the lone non‐significant comparison involving the communication construct. There are also statistically significant differences between 3PL users and providers for each of the four relationship marketing outcomes.

Although the present study utilized previously validated relationship marketing elements and outcomes, future research could examine other relationship marketing elements and outcomes. Future research could also investigate relationship marketing issues through dyads/matched pairs of 3PL users and providers.

This manuscript examines 3PL with respect to theories and/or frameworks that comes from outside the logistics discipline, an approach advocated by Stock. Moreover, the paper adds to Moore's 3PL/relationship marketing research by investigating relationship elements and outcomes. The current paper adds to the rather limited literature that incorporates both 3PL user and provider perspectives.

The researchers maintain that when a firm tackles “green concerns,” there could be several repercussions for manufacturing strategy decision areas (MS DAs). However, such repercussions are complex and have not been widely researched. This paper aims to propose a conceptual maturity stage model to study the configuration of MS DAs.

Firms exhibit different levels of “green” maturity in their journey and tend to make different choices in green technologies (GTs), resulting thereby in other compatible choices in their MS DAs. Extant literature has been synthesized in this light to build a conceptual maturity stage model in two steps. First, what is the GT that is involved! The second step discusses the possible implications of such a GT for MS DAs. Further, such information is organized according to a firm’s four maturity stages for all GTs that may be applicable. A case study has been undertaken to illustrate the model.

The results show good potential for the proposed conceptual model to examine the repercussions of MS DAs in industrial cases, and thereby develop relevant theories on this subject.

The proposed model was applied to a paint manufacturing company, which potentially limits the findings’ generalizability to other industries and/or geographies.

The proposed conceptual model can help managers assess the maturity stages of manufacturing to determine suitable adjustments that may be required in configuring MS DAs to improve their positions.

This is among the very few models to explore the repercussions of green manufacturing for MS DAs according to the four-stage maturity model.

The limited academic literature available on niche marketing has mainly focused on market‐specific factors, and the discussion has in particular centred on the characteristics of what a niche is and what causes it to exist. In an attempt to fill this gap in the literature, the purpose of this paper is to identify the strategic capabilities of niche firms.

In this paper, aspects regarding niche marketing and strategic capability are identified and briefly discussed with reference to the existing literature. Next, the methodology for the research at hand is presented, followed by a discussion of its findings. The paper then continues with the conclusion of this research, followed by pinpointing some of its limitations and providing recommendations for future research.

All the investigated case firms follow a focused differentiation strategy to achieve a sustainable competitive advantage. The focus aspect of the niche firms' strategy is mirrored in the reported narrow geographic market focus, which could be limited to only one country, a limited number of customers – one sole customer in one case – or a limited number of customer types. With regard to strategic capabilities, the results were rather similar across cases, particularly for each pair of case firms within similar sectors (wine, organic salmon, and stockfish). From the case firms' point of view, it is clear that having access to high‐quality raw material is critical to their strategy of delivering high‐quality products. Finally, many of the identified resources and competences appear rather static, or fixed over several years.

The strategic capabilities as identified in this paper can be described and placed at different stages within the firms' value chains. Each stage has its own set of important strategic capabilities. These stages are: inbound logistics, production or refinement, and marketing and sales.

Activities on direct value chain directly add value to the products/services delivered to the customers. This value addition can be further enhanced by taking up flexibility initiatives on these direct value chain activities. The purpose of this paper is to identify flexibility initiatives on the direct value chain and carry out their valuation.

Since different value addition criteria (i.e. benefits and costs) may be both tangible and intangible, an interpretive valuation based on multi-criteria framework would be desirable. The paper deploys the efficient interpretive ranking process (IRP) for this purpose. It uses total interpretive structural modeling (TISM) to derive weights of criteria based on their respective driving power. The paper also makes a methodological contribution to assess transitive dominance in IRP based on transitivity check as used in the modified TISM process.

The paper uses a multi-criteria valuation to examine the proposition that the flexibility initiatives will add a higher value as we go downstream in the value chain. The flexibility initiatives linked with marketing such as product upgradation and switching, customized services and dynamic pricing are found to be most value adding in character.

The main limitation of this study is that it is generic in nature and need to be replicated in multiple case situations. The methodology proposed can be utilized for specific case analysis for flexibility valuation on the direct value chain.

The practitioners may be able to use the proposed method of TISM–IRP with improvements in real-life applications. The proposed multi-criteria valuation is interpretive in nature and can be utilized by practicing managers in group settings even if they do not have complete data.

The strategy and operations researchers will find promise in the methodology to investigate and prioritize the initiatives planned to enhance flexibility in different value chain activities. The researchers on multi-criteria decision making will find the methodological enhancement proposed in terms of graphically deriving the transitive dominance to be useful in other applications as well.

Reviews the literature of purchasing and transportation management to identify factors in the purchasing and transportation processes that influence a firm’s ability to reduce total cycle time. Presents a model of these factors to establish a framework for guiding research into comprehensive, systematic approaches to total cycle time reduction. In addition, the total cycle time model serves as a blueprint for practitioners in evaluating, in specific organizations, the effect of the purchasing and transportation processes on total cycle time. Although much of the research reviewed herein dates to the early 1980s its consideration as part of a comprehensive, systematic examination of the total cycle time concept is new.

The traffic flow pattern of the material distribution activity within the Canadian Forces was evaluated. The aim was to validate the current operation of the material traffic system. Sample transportation data were collected, and the traffic flow pattern and utilisations of the Canadian Forces′ scheduled tractor‐trailer units were statistically inferred. Because historical material traffic data were lacking, the material traffic flow pattern for this one‐time snapshot of the transportation system did not provide a basis from which any trend on the Canadian Forces′ vehicle utilisation could be established.

Aims to provide a model of technology strategy, which shows how firms can strategically plan for and adopt new information technology. The critical issue in managing technology strategy is to assess the role which it can play in enhancing the firm′s competitive position through improving its value activities, which can provide sustainable competitive advantage to the adopting firm and its business partners. Utilizes the competitive strategy paradigm of technology strategy to explore the strategic impact of electronic data interchange (EDI) technology using the global air express industry as an example. This industry provides an appropriate example for applying the paradigm because firms competing in global markets must successfully address many of those problems which are facing global air express firms. Other industries can learn from the experience of air express firms′ use of technology to improve their competitive performance.