Enablers and inhibitors to horizontal collaboration between competitors: an investigation in UK retail supply chains
Over the last half-century, the development of physical distributionmanagement has led to the establishment of logistics, which itself hasdeveloped into one of the key components of supply chain management. Asdifferent models of competition have developed in parallel, so the concept ofcompetition between supply chains, as opposed to between firms, has beendescribed. These two trends are striking in the context of UK grocery retailing.This market sector is described as at the leading edge of innovation and isarguably among the most efficient in the one world. The speed and efficiencyof these retail supply chains has underpinned customer offerings of range andfreshness and has contributed to the growth of supermarket chains and thusthe concentration of retail power in the UK grocery market.These trends then raise two issues. Innovation in logistics and distributionmanagement appears to be easy to copy and thus goods ideas tend to beadopted by competitors and best practise is quickly and uniformly applied.Competitive advantage is, therefore, short term only. Secondly, neworganisational paradigms, such as the extended or virtual enterprise, supportthe concept of competition between vertically integrated supply chains.However, it is not necessarily the case that all elements of the supply chainmust be in competition. Whilst range, branding and procurement policies maycontinue to offer competitive advantage over time, the logistics elements ofthe supply chain might afford an opportunity for collaboration betweencompeting supply chains, as these elements contribute no long termadvantage to individual firms.New models for corporate strategy argue that collaboration betweencompetitors is not only possible but desirable in certain areas of operationsand under certain circumstances. Efficient Consumer Response (ECR) offersa set of tools for exploring potential areas of collaboration in the retail andgrocery markets. However, in spite of collaboration in other areas and predictions by authors of collaboration in logistics operations, there is littleevidence of applications in practise. This research set out to explore why thismight be so. Research in the UK grocery market led to the proposition of aseries of enablers and inhibitors for horizontal logistics collaborations, whichwere then tested in two other UK retail contexts.
Year of publication: |
2006
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Authors: | Stephens, Charles |
Other Persons: | Chapman, Paul (contributor) |
Publisher: |
Cranfield University |
Saved in:
freely available
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