What is the Right Supply Chain for Your Shopper? Exploring the Shopper Service Ecosystem

• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/jbl.12122
• Published date: 01 June 2016
• Author: Daniel J. Flint,Hannah J. Stolze,Diane A. Mollenkopf
• Date: 01 June 2016

What is the Right Supply Chain for Your Shopper? Exploring the

Shopper Service Ecosystem

Hannah J. Stolze

1

, Diane A. Mollenkopf

2

, and Daniel J. Flint

2

1

Wheaton College

2

University of Tennessee

The emergence of shopper marketing represents a major strategic force in consumer goods branding and retailing, and poses significant

challenges to pre existing supply chain thought that most scholars have yet to address. In order to address the marketing and supply chain

challenges presented by shopper marketing initiatives, scholars from both disciplines can find common ground by focusing on the shopper

instead of consumers or products. The issue is no longer one of matching a supply chain to a product. Instead, marketers and supply chain man-

agers need to ask, “What’s the right supply chain for our shopper?”The shopper service ecosystem framework developed in this paper brings

together the service dominant logic of marketing with the service ecosystem perspective in supply chain management. Future research frontiers

suggest research directions that bridge the marketing and supply chain disciplines to create a multidisciplinary foundation for future research in

the shopper marketing realm.

Keywords: shopper marketing; supply chain execution; service ecosystem

The only way I can survive in the consumer goods industry

today is to master shopper marketing, which is nothing

short of a new discipline. And the only way I can do that

is to fundamentally change my supply chain in order to be

more agile... (John Compton, CEO Americas Foods,

PepsiCo, 2010 university presentation)

INTRODUCTION

The emergence of shopper marketing represents a major strategic

force in consumer goods branding and retailing, and poses signif-

icant challenges for supply chain execution (Deloitte Research

2007; Shankar et al. 2011). As reflected in the lead-in quote

from the former PepsiCo executive, consumer packaged goods

(CPG) companies are wrestling to master shopper marketing and

to understand the implications of shopper marketing for supply

chain strategies. Research suggests that 76% of shoppers make

purchase decisions in the store, but industry studies also reflect

poor shopper marketing program execution (Inman et al. 2009;

POPAI 2012). This is due to lack of shopper marketing training,

misalignment within organizations, lack of collaboration between

channel partners, and the inability of the supply chain to adapt to

the challenges of serving multiple shoppers with unique shopping

experiences while selling the same product in a variety of assort-

ments within an omni-channel environment (Deloitte Research

2007; Strang 2013).

Likewise, scholars face challenges in making meaningful con-

tributions to the theory or practice of CPG shopper marketing

efforts because of deficiencies in current approaches to both mar-

keting and supply chain theory and research. Marketing scholars

focus predominantly on end consumers’behaviors and experi-

ences, increasingly through a service dominant logic (S-D Logic)

lens (Ballantyne and Varey 2007). Yet marketers pay far less

attention to supply chain implementation or shopper behavior.

Supply chain researchers tend to focus on the inventory system,

often through a systems dynamics lens (Forrester 1958; Lee et al.

2004) or on the development and deployment of strategic

resources related to product issues. However, supply chain litera-

tures often ignore the desires and experiences of consumers and

rarely acknowledges the shopper. Business-to-business relation-

ships have also been a focus of supply chain researchers, often

through resource-based view and relational view lenses (Mentzer

et al. 2001; Frankel et al. 2008).

Additionally, marketing and supply chain scholars have, with

few exceptions, virtually ignored the distinctions between shoppers

and consumers. While a shopper may or may not become the con-

sumer of what has been purchased, the shopping activity is very

different than the consumption activity, and occurs at a different

point in time from consumption. By focusing on the shopper,

retailers and CPG manufacturers are shifting focus from consump-

tion and products to the shopping experience itself, providing

an opportunity for scholars from marketing and supply chain

disciplines to find common ground for advancing knowledge.

Fisher (1997) introduces the notion of matching a company’s

supply chain to the product, citing the need for efficient (cost

and forecast focused) or responsive (customer focused) supply

chain strategies. With the advent of shopper marketing, however,

the issue is no longer one of matching a supply chain to a prod-

uct. Instead, marketers and supply chain managers need to ask,

“What’s the right supply chain for our shopper?”To answer this

question, a paradigmatic shift in thinking is needed that goes

beyond the traditional focus on products and consumers. Because

shopper marketing emphasizes the shopper instead of the

consumer, researchers need to address how the same product can

be experienced simultaneously in different shopping contexts

within the same store format or in an omni-channel format. Such

an approach may require dynamic capabilities that enable firms

and their employees to be both adaptable in a quickly changing

Corresponding author:

Hannah J. Stolze, Assistant Professor of Marketing, Department of

Business & Economics, 501 College Ave., Wheaton College, Whea-

ton, IL 60187, USA; E-mail: hannah.stolze@wheaton.edu

Journal of Business Logistics, 2016, 37(2): 185–197 doi: 10.1111/jbl.12122

© Council of Supply Chain Management Professionals