42 research outputs found
Product Sourcing Strategies of UK Footwear Firms
This research projects is aimed at clarifying the impact of global economic shifts on UK footwear sector firmsā future product sourcing strategies, their sourcing location decisions and how they might respond to ongoing turbulence if further contraction within the domestic industry is to be halted.
China remains the world largest exporter of footwear to the UK. They are, however, experiencing significant inflationary pressures in manufacturing such that some UK firms are considering alternative sourcing locations.
Additionally, many footwear firms seek to achieve greater supply chain (SC) agility whether outsourcing or manufacturing in order to respond more effectively to satisfying demand in increasingly fickle UK market segments and in some export markets. In this regard consideration is being given to manufacturing repatriation, however, sector expertise is becoming increasingly scarce with the resulting loss of traditional shoemaking knowledge and āknow-howā. Given such circumstances, technological innovation may prove to be the only strategy for re-shoring to become viable.
The research will adopt both Transaction Cost Theory and the Resource Base View as both individual and complementary theoretical lens.
Comparative case studies provide the main source of data, supported by sector specialist key informant narratives in order to provide verification to the primary outputs. The primary case studies will be subjected to ācross caseā analysis in order to generate findings which identify critical issues relating to footwear product sourcing by UK firms. In turn they will provide a platform for the development of new SC theoretical concepts and generate usable supply chain practitioner models/ frameworks.
If adopted these new approaches to product sourcing strategy should positively impact on firm performance product sourcing efficiency, improved SC agility to halt sector decline
Coordination And Conflict In The Global Apparel Value Chain
The interdisciplinary paradigm of global value chains gives us a baseline understanding of how the $1.3 trillion apparel market is organized. Brands are believed to be largely responsible for industry organization. While there are many case studies of industries like apparel or electronics, they are rarely carried out with an ethnographic sensibility that digs into the interactions of conflict, coordination, and execution. My dissertation takes us inside apparel factories, buying agencies, and textile mills in India. I use organizational theory, economic sociology, and social psychology to gain an intimate understanding of how fashionable objects are anticipated, designed, sourced, planned, constructed, and tested. The chief substantive contribution of the work is the integration of multiple levels of analysis, from the transnational coordination of forecasting down to the micro analysis of assembly lines. Additional findings, like the existence of brokerage networks that mediate design from the global semi-periphery, counter 125 years of academic and political skepticism. At the brand level, again in contrast to existing evidence, I find that differences between luxury and discount brands extend throughout dozens of decisions and quality parameters. Different assessments are partially explained by occupational positioning. Our self-presentations are cut from global cloth
Can Upward Brand Extensions be an Opportunity for Marketing Managers During the Covid-19 Pandemic and Beyond?
Early COVID-19 research has guided current managerial practice by introducing
more products across different product categories as consumers tried to avoid
perceived health risks from food shortages, i.e. horizontal brand extensions. For
example, Leon, a fast-food restaurant in the UK, introduced a new range of ready
meal products. However, when the food supply stabilised, availability may no
longer be a concern for consumers. Instead, job losses could be a driver of higher
perceived financial risks. Meanwhile, it remains unknown whether the perceived
health or financial risks play a more significant role on consumersā consumptions.
Our preliminary survey shows perceived health risks outperform perceived
financial risks to positively influence purchase intention during COVID-19. We
suggest such a result indicates an opportunity for marketers to consider
introducing premium priced products, i.e. upward brand extensions. The risk-asļæ½feelings and signalling theories were used to explain consumer choice under risk may adopt affective heuristic processing, using minimal cognitive efforts to
evaluate products. Based on this, consumers are likely to be affected by the salient
high-quality and reliable product cue of upward extension signalled by its
premium price level, which may attract consumers to purchase when they have
high perceived health risks associated with COVID-19. Addressing this, a series of
experimental studies confirm that upward brand extensions (versus normal new
product introductions) can positively moderate the positive effect between
perceived health risks associated with COVID-19 and purchase intention. Such an
effect can be mediated by affective heuristic information processing. The results
contribute to emergent COVID-19 literature and managerial practice during the
pandemic but could also inform post-pandemic thinking around vertical brand
extensions
Application of Optimization in Production, Logistics, Inventory, Supply Chain Management and Block Chain
The evolution of industrial development since the 18th century is now experiencing the fourth industrial revolution. The effect of the development has propagated into almost every sector of the industry. From inventory to the circular economy, the effectiveness of technology has been fruitful for industry. The recent trends in research, with new ideas and methodologies, are included in this book. Several new ideas and business strategies are developed in the area of the supply chain management, logistics, optimization, and forecasting for the improvement of the economy of the society and the environment. The proposed technologies and ideas are either novel or help modify several other new ideas. Different real life problems with different dimensions are discussed in the book so that readers may connect with the recent issues in society and industry. The collection of the articles provides a glimpse into the new research trends in technology, business, and the environment
Sustainability in Supply Chains with Behavioral Concerns
Environmental sustainability has received considerable attention in industry and academia. Many firms have begun to adopt sustainability practices, such as investing in cleaner technology and using organic or recyclable materials, to enhance sustainability in supply chains. Such sustainability practices affect corporate social responsibility and business performance. On the other hand, when consumers and supply chain managers make decisions, they may be constrained by behavioral concerns. Behavioral concerns can significantly influence optimization in supply chains. Thus, it is critical to consider the impacts of behavioral concerns on sustainability in supply chains. In this paper, we concisely examine studies in sustainability issues in supply chains with behavioral concerns and introduce the papers featured in this Special Issue
The Role of Consumer Behaviour in Service Operations Management
In this thesis, I study the impact of consumer behaviour on service providersā operations. In the ļ¬rst study, I consider service systems where customers do not know the distribution of uncertain service quality and cannot estimate it fully rationally. Instead, they form their beliefs by taking the average of several anecdotes, the size of which measures their level of bounded rationality. I characterise the customersā joining behaviour and the service providerās pricing, quality control, and information disclosure decisions. Bounded rationality induces customers to form different estimates of the service quality and leads the service provider to use pricing as a market segmentation tool, which is radically different from the full rationality setting. When the service provider also has control over quality, I ļ¬nd that it may reduce both quality and price as customers gather more anecdotes. In addition, a high-quality service provider may not disclose quality information if the sample size is small. In the second study, I analyse the performance of opaque selling in countering the negative revenue impact from consumersā strategic waiting behaviour in vertically differentiated markets. The advantage of opaque selling is to increase the ļ¬rmās regular price, whereas the disadvantage lies in the inļ¬exibility of segmenting different types of consumers. Both the advantage and the disadvantage are radically different from their counterparts in horizontally differentiated markets, and this contrast generates opposite policy recommendations across the two settings. In the third study, I investigate an online storeās product return policy when competing with a physical store, in which consumers can try the product before purchase. I ļ¬nd that the online store should offer product return only if it is socially efļ¬cient. Moreover, it should allocate product return cost between the online store and the consumers to minimise the total return cost
Omnichannel Operations Management
This dissertation studies how a firm could effectively make use of different selling channels to provide consumers with a seamless shopping experience. In the three essays, by analyzing stylized models where firms operates both online and offline channels and consumers strategically make channel choices, we examine the impacts of different types of omnichannel strategies in different industries. In the first essay, we focus on a specific omnichannel fulfillment strategy, i.e., buy-online-and-pick-up-in-store (BOPS). We find it may not be profitable to implement BOPS on products that sell well in stores. We also consider a decentralized retail system where store and online channels are managed separately, and find it is rarely efficient to allocate all BOPS revenue to a single channel. In the second essay, we study how retailers can effectively deliver product and inventory information to omnichannel consumers who strategically choose whether to gather information online/offline and whether to buy products online/offline. Specifically, we consider three information mechanisms: physical showrooms, virtual showrooms, and availability information. Our main result is that these information mechanisms may sometimes change customersā channel choice in a way such that total product returns increase and total retail profit decreases. In the third essay, we look at the restaurant industry. Specifically, we study the impacts of different self-order technologies on service operations. Online technology, through websites and mobile apps, allows customers to order and pay before coming to the store; offline technology, such as self-service kiosks, allows store customers to place orders without interacting with a human employee. We develop a stylized queueing model and study the impacts of self-order technologies on customer demand, employment levels, and restaurant profits. We find there could be a win-win-win situation, where everyone in the market, i.e., consumers (including those who do not use the technology), workers and the firm, could benefit from the implementation of the self-order technologies
Analysis of the Project Supply Chains: Coordination and Fair Allocation
This research investigates how project contracts can coordinate the supply chain between a project manager and contractor and if the solutions can be ensured as equitable. The main features of this type of supply chain are the trade-offs between the selection of a higher rate of resource consumption with a consequent higher cost to the contractor and a lower rate of resource consumption leading to later delivery and a reduction of the project-reward to the project manager. This broader problem could lead to a coordination problem for the overall supply chain. This research proposed a solution to this broader problem in two different scenarios: Take it or leave it scenario and negotiation scenario. Finally, the fair allocation of the risks and benefits and the related decision-making issues are addressed as one of the behavioural barriers to the supply chain coordination.
The coordination issues in a take it or leave it scenario are addressed using time-based and fixed price project contracts using Stackelberg games. Models of coordination were proposed with time-based contracts, but the fixed price contracts failed to coordinate. The coordination problems in negotiation scenario are addressed with the Nash's bargaining, the Kalai Smorodinsky bargaining, and the utilitarian approach. A cost plus contract has been found to dominate the solutions over any cost sharing contract and fixed price contract for Nash's bargaining and Kalai Smorodinsky bargaining cases. Finally, the issues of fairness of allocation of risks and benefits as one of the challenges of supply chain coordination, have been investigated. The fixed price contracts were found to coordinate the supply chain under consideration alongside the time-based contracts if the members had fairness concern.
Some of the key features of this research include the incorporation of various probability distributions for the project completion time and cost, the inclusion of various forms of risk preference, and addressing the challenges of fair allocation in project supply chains