Urbanness and Its Implications for Logistics Strategy: A Revised Perspective

Due to rapid urbanization, logistics providers are dealing with the conundrum of misaligned strategies for urban environments. Logistics providers often see the urbanness of an activity region as a constraint, while at the same time urban actors view logistics activities within their immediate environment as disruption. These attitudes obscure the value that logistics can provide for urban areas. The current research synchronizes the notions of urban and logistics by reconceptualizing urbanness (i.e., an area’s state of being urban) from the logistics service provider’s perspective. Utilizing a conceptual abstraction technique, the concept of urbanness is revised and differentiated to redefine urban areas as value clusters looking to balance supply and demand globally while also providing access to service at the local urban level. Further, logistics service providers are seen as offering value to urban areas through network logistics and localized logistics. Identifying these differentiated value propositions suggests that transportation providers should respond to urbanness not as a constraint, but as a context where ambidextrous strategies provide the greatest return. Our conceptual revision of urbanness offers promising future avenues of research dealing with urban complexity and logistics providers value appropriation

Minimizing food waste in grocery store operations: literature review and research agenda

Research on grocery waste in food retailing has recently attracted particular interest. Investigations in this area are relevant to address the problems of wasted resources and ethical concerns, as well as economic aspects from the retailer’s perspective. Reasons for food waste in retail are already well-studied empirically, and based on this, proposals for reduction are discussed. However, comprehensive approaches for preventing food waste in store operations using analytics and modeling methods are scarce. No work has yet systematized related research in this domain. As a result, there is neither any up-to-date literature review nor any agenda for future research. We contribute with the first structured literature review of analytics and modeling methods dealing with food waste prevention in retail store operations. This work identifies cross-cutting store-related planning areas to mitigate food waste, namely (1) assortment and shelf space planning, (2) replenishment policies, and (3) dynamic pricing policies. We introduce a common classification scheme of literature with regard to the depth of food waste integration and the characteristics of these planning problems. This builds our foundation to review analytics and modeling approaches. Current literature considers food waste mainly as a side effect in costing and often ignores product age dependent demand by customers. Furthermore, approaches are not integrated across planning areas. Future lines of research point to the most promising open questions in this field

Strategies for Implementing Self-service Technologies in Supermarket Retail Operations

AbstractOrganization leaders who do not adopt self-service technology (SST) are at risk of failure. The adaptation of SST can aid leaders in the supermarket industry improve checkout operations, increase efficiency, and minimize customers’ waiting experiences, reducing the customers’ shopping satisfaction. Grounded in the disruptive innovation theory, the purpose of this multiple case study was to explore strategies supermarket managers use to adapt SST practices. The participants included six supermarket managers in Jackson County of Southern Illinois. Data were collected from face-to-face interviews with managers, company documentation, and observations. Thematic analysis was used to analyze the data. Four themes emerged: cultural changes and technology, environmental dynamics, company capital and technical knowledge, and company policy and structures. Through effective and continuous training, managers and employees should ascertain how SST affects the store to benefit customers’ trust, loyalty, and sustainability. The implications for positive social change include overall customer satisfaction through speed, ease-of-use, control, reliability, and enjoyment of the service quality delivered by SST checkout. Other positive social change includes creating opportunities to adapt to SST practices and performance and increase both supermarkets’ profitability and tax revenues for surrounding communities

An exploration of online fulfilment centres in omni-channel grocery retail

Grocery retail is going through a rapid shift and retailers are moving towards omni-channel. Omni-channel means that a retailer has multiple channels in which thecustomer can move seamlessly, with the back-end organised to make this possible.While the grocery-retail sector has started to see a rapid growth in online sales,omni-channel grocery retailers are struggling with profitability in their onlinechannels. For these retailers, efficient logistics and material handling are crucial toachieve profitability. Today, it is common for omni-channel grocery retailers toinvest in an online fulfilment centre (OFC) when volumes are growing. A keycomponent for improving profitability is thus to improve the OFC configuration (i.e.warehouse operations, design, and resource). Despite the important role that an OFCplays for omni-channel performance and profitability, extant research is lacking onhow to configure an OFC in omni-channel grocery retail. Hence, the purpose of thisthesis was to ‘explore how grocery retailers are configuring their OFCs and in whatway they adapt to specific challenges and context’