Authors: Andrea Runfola; Simone Guercini
The fashion apparel business is traditionally characterized by intense competition and short product life cycles. Recentmarketing literature has also focused on the increasing importance of retailing. Retailers are beginning to assume a central role inthe configuration of supplier networks, being operators who act globally either in terms of market seeking or resource seeking.At this stage a set of problems emerge. In particular, we focus on buyer-seller relationship due to the rise in new formulas inclothing retailing with production management models differing from the traditional systems. These new trends seem to have asignificant impact on the upstream relation in the supply chain, due to vertical integration in some industrial functions(designing, sourcing, quality control) by retailers. For this reason, the paper investigates how retailers manage their relationsupstream in the supply chain, focusing on the balance expressed in terms of alternatives between lean/agile sourcing strategies,local/overseas suppliers and product/range complexity.1.
Journal: ( – )
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Publish Year: 2004
Conference: Copenhagen, Denmark (2004)