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The purpose of this paper is to clarify what factors affect the recent trend of having self‐planning functions within Japanese apparel wholesalers.

A questionnaire survey was conducted involving Japanese apparel wholesalers and applied the probit and multinomial Logit regression analyses.

The main findings are as follows: large‐scale wholesalers who are located in urban areas tend to have their own planning functions, whereas small‐scale wholesalers who are located in rural areas tend not to have self‐planning functions and handle goods planned by other suppliers; wholesalers who handle a wide range of apparel and conduct business with retailers located in the same area tend not to have their own planning functions; the apparel wholesalers who have business dealings with many suppliers have the ability to promote themselves to the retailers; and the apparel wholesalers who have self‐planning functions tend to obtain goods from within Japan and other countries and sell goods throughout Japan.

Small‐scale and rural apparel wholesalers face difficult circumstances due to their size, location and lack of self‐promotion ability. In contrast, large‐scale and urban wholesalers are able to ensure greater independence due to their size and location.

This paper focuses on the important role of wholesalers in the Japanese apparel industry and, by using the empirical approach, can clarify factors affecting the recent trend of having self‐planning functions within Japanese apparel wholesalers.

The study here examines how business actors adapt to changes in networks by analyzing their perceptions or their network pictures. The study is exploratory or iterative in the sense that revisions occur to the research question, method, theory, and context as an integral part of the research process.

Changes within networks receive less research attention, although considerable research exists on explaining business network structures in different research traditions. This study analyzes changes in networks in terms of the industrial network approach. This approach sees networks as connected relationships between actors, where interdependent companies interact based on their sensemaking of their relevant network environment. The study develops a concept of network change as well as an operationalization for comparing perceptions of change, where the study introduces a template model of dottograms to systematically analyze differences in perceptions. The study then applies the model to analyze findings from a case study of Norwegian/Japanese seafood distribution, and the chapter provides a rich description of a complex system facing considerable pressure to change. In-depth personal interviews and cognitive mapping techniques are the main research tools applied, in addition to tracer studies and personal observation.

The dottogram method represents a valuable contribution to case study research as it enables systematic within-case and across-case analyses. A further theoretical contribution of the study is the suggestion that network change is about actors seeking to change their network position to gain access to resources. Thereby, the study also implies a close relationship between the concepts network position and the network change that has not been discussed within the network approach in great detail.

Another major contribution of the study is the analysis of the role that network pictures play in actors' efforts to change their network position. The study develops seven propositions in an attempt to describe the role of network pictures in network change. So far, the relevant literature discusses network pictures mainly as a theoretical concept. Finally, the chapter concludes with important implications for management practice.

A study of the price discounts granted by Morton Salt Company and other producers of table salt in the U.S. on their sales of table salt to grocery wholesalers and retailers. The discounts were found to be illegal under the Robinson-Patman Act by the Federal Trade Commission and the Supreme Court. The Commission and the Court believed that the discounts were unjustified price concessions granted to “large” buyers, consistent with the concerns of the Robinson-Patman Act. However, the evidence indicates that the most common discount – the “carload discount” – was received by virtually all buyers, regardless of the buyer’s size; the other discounts – “annual volume” discounts – though received primarily by “large” buyers, were likely cost based. The history of the discounts and likely reasons why they were granted are explored in detail.

The purpose of this paper is to compare the effectiveness of the Buy-and-Hold (BNH), Fee-for-Service (FFS), and Direct-to-pharmacy (DTP) agreements for the US pharmaceutical industry and its individual participants. There have been mixed responses to these agreements and the industry is currently under debate as to which contract would be best for the industry and its individual participants. The question is answered by comparing the agreements and settling the industry debate regarding the impact of these distribution agreements.

The model features multi-period production-inventory planning with time varying parameters in a decentralized setting. Under each distribution agreement, mathematical programming models are formulated to determine the profit maximizing production, inventory, and ordering decisions for the manufacturer and the wholesaler in a finite time horizon. The applicability of the model in the US pharmaceutical industry using real-world data is demonstrated.

It is shown that the DTP agreement always outperforms the BNH and FFS agreements. Furthermore, the DTP agreement is flexible because it allows the manufacturer and the wholesaler to split the additional profit in an arbitrary way. The findings reveal that the DTP agreement can improve total profit by about 0.08 - 1 percent (relative to FFS) and 5 percent (relative to BNH).

Considering the size of the pharmaceutical industry, efficient distribution agreements are imperative. Unfortunately, the existing literature provides insufficient guidance to help managers make this important decision. This knowledge gap is addressed in literature, and provides important insight for practitioners on what agreement is most beneficial for this industry.

When making sourcing decisions, both cost optimization and customer demand fulfillment are equally important for firm competitiveness. The purpose of this paper is to develop a stochastic search technique, hybrid genetic algorithm (HGA), for cost-optimized decision making in wholesaler inventory management in a supply chain network of wholesalers, retailers and suppliers.

This study develops a HGA by using a mixture of greedy-based and randomly generated solutions in the initial population and a local search method (hill climbing) applied to individuals selected for performing crossover before crossover is implemented and to the best individual in the population at the end of HGA as well as gene slice and integration.

The application of the proposed HGA is illustrated by considering multiple scenarios and comparing with the other commonly adopted methods of standard genetic algorithm, simulated annealing and tabu search. The simulation results demonstrate the capability of the proposed approach in producing more effective solutions.

The pragmatic importance of this method is for the inventory management of wholesaler operations and this can be scalable to address real contexts with multiple wholesalers and multiple suppliers with variable lead times.

The proposed stochastic-based search techniques have the capability in producing good-quality optimal or suboptimal solutions for large-scale problems within a reasonable time using ordinary computing resources available in firms.

The purpose of this study is to investigate the customer's perception of service quality within the context of the pharmaceutical supply chain, and look specifically at the supplier/customer relationship.

The research in question focuses on the trading relationship between a pharmaceutical wholesaler and its pharmacy customers. Existing literature shows that quality of the overall service is determined by the customer's perceptions of that service; therefore it is important that the supplier measures the customer's perception of service quality and understands what factors influence that perception and build this into their service delivery. The data were collected via a series of qualitative semi‐structured interviews with hospital and retail pharmacies located in the North West of England.

The findings show that pharmacy customers have a range of vitally important to less important criteria associated with good service quality and that pharmaceutical wholesalers as suppliers should aim to excel at the vital and important issues and meet those of lesser importance to satisfy customers expectations of service quality.

This reinforces the importance of measuring customer expectations and incorporating outputs into service design to ensure a customer focus to the service provided. Further consideration should be given to adopting the SERVQUAL tool in conducting future research and analysis.

Suppliers should be aware that there are vital activities that customers expect to have performed/delivered and that they need to know what these are and excel at these, whilst managing less important criteria effectively.

This paper provides an insight into the customer‐supplier relationship within the pharmaceutical supply chain in the NHS, which will be of benefit to practitioners and academics in this field.

The purpose of this paper is to discuss complexity assessment in supply chains, to describe a methodology for measuring supply chain complexity in distributive trade and to illustrate the measurement of supply chain complexity and mechanisms to cope with supply chain complexity in distributive trade.

The paper discusses literature on measuring supply chain complexity and uses five case studies among wholesale companies to illustrate a methodology to measure supply chain complexity and to discuss strategies to cope with supply chain complexity.

The study confirms the multifaceted nature of supply chain complexity. The paper identifies eight drivers of supply chain complexity and uses these to illustrate the measurement of supply chain complexity in a wholesale environment. The paper identifies six strategies used by wholesalers for coping with supply chain complexity and identifies interrelations between supply chain complexity drivers and these strategies.

The research is based on case studies in wholesale companies; future research may include survey research, including other sectors to analyze industry differences but may also focus on other parts of the supply chain.

The study provides insights into how to identify and measure complexity in a supply chain and what can be done to manage supply chain complexity.

The measurement approach is new to supply chain management and is based on multiple drivers of supply chain complexity. The research is focused on wholesalers, which is a segment that has received limited academic attention in supply chain research to date.

We review the Japanese distribution system, its positives and negatives, its cultural heritage, and discuss the implications for the future for it.

The purpose of this paper is to estimate the technical efficiency of Chinese table grape wholesalers and subsequently to examine the degree to which the calculated efficiency correlates with a set of explanatory variables.

A two-stage procedure is applied in this paper. First, a non-parametric data envelopment analysis (DEA) technique is applied to investigate the degree of technical efficiency for Chinese table grape wholesalers. Second, Tobit regression is used to analyze the factors influencing technical efficiency.

Research results reveal that the mean technical efficiency of the sample is 0.544 and 0.860 under constant returns scale (CRS) and VRS assumptions, respectively, and the scale efficiency (SE) is 0.620. The variables of experiences, number of grape varieties on sale, daily selling volumes and fixed sale ratio have a significant effect on technical efficiency, while the other exogenous variables do not affect the efficiency in any significant way.

The findings of this research are specific to table grape wholesalers in China, however, the method used in this study is transferrable and applicable to the study of similar problems in others countries.

This research has yielded some interesting and original insights into the efficiency level of Chinese grape wholesalers and the factors that influence the level of efficiency. The findings have practical implications for Chinese agriculture policy makers, and are able to stimulate further research of a similar type in the international agricultural research community.

The purpose of this paper is to highlight two important strategies (private label strategy and specialty store strategy) of the Japanese wholesale apparel market and then to clarify the characteristics of those apparel wholesalers who own or intend to establish specialty private label stores.

A questionnaire survey was carried out on 3,008 apparel wholesalers in Japan and probit regression analyses were applied to identify what types of apparel wholesalers already own or whether they intend to establish specialty private label stores.

The main findings are as follows: large‐scale apparel wholesalers tend to own specialty private label stores but these wholesalers experience a worse financial outcome; apparel wholesalers with brand strength tend to possess their own specialty stores; and apparel wholesalers, who do not currently own specialty stores, plan to strengthen their brands in order to take advantage of apparel distribution channels.

Because of a lack of published data, no empirical studies have investigated the effectiveness of private label or specialty store strategies developed by Japanese apparel wholesalers. The present study has sought to address this problem by conducting questionnaire surveys with all Japanese apparel wholesalers and has, therefore, been able to clarify the situation regarding survival in the apparel market by considering those apparel wholesalers that already own or intend to establish specialty private label stores.