Conceptualizing a Model for Demand –Side Risk in Supply Chain

Abstract

With growing competition and dynamicity in the tastes and preferences of customers, there is a recent growth in the number of supply chain disruptions as well; for e.g. the recent flood in Thailand affecting the global operations of hard-disk manufacturers like Seagate, Western Digital to car makers Honda and Toyota. Thus an increased need is felt by these firms to adopt effective risk mitigation strategies which have further increased the necessity of studying several types of risk inherent in the supply chains and corresponding significant variables affecting each of them. Till date, there is no study conceptualizing a framework for measuring exclusively each of the risk types inherent in the supply chain. The present study attempts to formulate a framework for managing demand side risk from a supply chain perspective for a focal firm through structured literature review and have contributed by adding important predictors like trust towards customer, trust towards suppliers, and relationship quality with suppliers, relationship quality with customers and information sharing with suppliers with the existing ones like supplier dependence, customer dependence, supplier concentration, single sourcing and global sourcing.