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The purpose of this research is to highlight the significance of advancing research methodologies in logistics, operations and supply chain management. It seeks to expand the scope of research questions and explore areas previously constrained by traditional methodological approaches, thereby enhancing the exploration of complex, real-world business issues.

This commentary introduces and discusses the special issue on “Advances in Research Methodologies for Logistics and Supply Chain Management,” exploring methodological innovations, diversity and their potential to address complex business and disciplinary challenges. The commentary assesses a broad spectrum of methodologies, ranging from traditional qualitative and quantitative approaches to overlooked methods such as qualitative comparative analysis, netnography, design science, Bayesian networks, machine learning and repertory grid technique. This diverse methodological approach enables a comprehensive examination of emerging and ongoing challenges in the supply chain. In the final summary section, we highlight additional areas of research method innovation not covered in this special issue, offering a broader perspective on future directions for methodological advancements in SCM research.

The findings suggest that integrating less explored methodologies from various disciplines encourages a richer, multi-level analysis of the supply chain management landscape. This integration facilitates a deeper understanding of emerging challenges, such as geopolitical issues, global supply chain disruptions and the integration of new technologies. Additionally, the exploration of ‘white space' in research methodologies indicates significant potential for discovering new insights that bridge practical problems with theoretical contributions.

The value of this methodological diversity extends beyond academic enrichment. It catalyzes the generation of innovative insights crucial for business practitioners, policymakers, consultants and academics. By adopting varied research designs and methodologies, the research note can offer a broader spectrum of analytical perspectives, crucial for uncovering nuanced insights into complex, cross-cultural and relationship-based dynamics in supply chain research.

The growth of last-mile delivery presents challenges like environmental impact, operational inefficiencies and risks of theft or damage. This study explores parcel locker adoption as a potential solution, focusing on the roles of information framing and consumer characteristics in influencing consumer adoption. It offers insights into prioritizing benefits (environmental, security, convenience) in information framing and which consumer traits, such as regulatory focus and gender, to consider in designing and promoting parcel locker networks.

We test our hypotheses with three scenario-based experiments. The first focuses on the key parcel locker benefit of environmental sustainability framing, the second on security framing and the third on convenience framing.

Our results show that consumers are more likely to use parcel locker delivery when exposed to loss-framed environmental or security information, particularly when they are male. Additionally, promotion-focused individuals, particularly males, are the most likely users when presented with loss-framed messages emphasizing the inconvenience and insecurity of home delivery.

Our findings produce a middle range theory of gender and regulatory focus in the context of consumer participation in parcel locker delivery. Specifically, we find that gender and regulatory focus influence consumer reactions to information disclosure, with loss-framed information more strongly influencing consumer intent for promotion-focused individuals.

Managers seeking to introduce parcel lockers or expand existing parcel locker networks should incorporate security and convenience into their locker network decisions. Initial locker bays should be located in or near sites that experience high consumer traffic from promotion-focused males. Additionally, information disclosed should highlight these security and convenience benefits compared to the relative inconvenience and risk associated with home delivery.

While information disclosures often emphasize the environmental benefits associated with parcel locker use, likely users find other benefits more convincing. Highlighting these alternative factors and incorporating them into parcel locker network design will still allow for environmental benefits, including carrier CO2 reduction, to emerge from increased parcel locker use. As locker networks become more established, expanding the network to cater to additional consumers may allow service providers to focus information on environmental benefits.

Prior research assumes an existing parcel locker network or consumer base when studying network design and adoption. This study highlights the importance of tailoring information to consumer characteristics, emphasizing network features that best align with potential parcel locker users. Specifically, we found gender and regulatory focus to influence consumer reaction to information disclosure, where loss-framed information is the most influential particularly for promotion-focus individuals.

Considering the transformational impact of technological advances in modern retail on the consumer experience and the associated growth of experimental studies in consumer-centric supply chain management (SCM) research, this paper presents a practical overview of key steps in the design of scenario-based experiments (SBEs) in the context of retail SCM.

Following a conceptual approach, this paper discusses essential aspects in the designing process, including the connection to theory, vignette design considerations, experimental checks and ensuring managerial relevance.

This paper presents a resource for SCM researchers in their pursuit of designing rigorous, context-focused SBEs in consumer-centric retail SCM research. Major design considerations and potential pitfalls are highlighted.

A well-designed experiment, including its vignettes, manipulations and checks, offers strong potential to inform actionable guidance for managers in the feasibility, strategy design, customization and consumer segmentation of retail SCM strategies.

This paper connects the steps in the design of SBEs to consumer-centric retail SCM questions, supporting future research in this realm.

The multidimensional complexity of urban settlements is increasing and the problem of spaces and territories brought to the scale of smart cities is a critical global issue. This study aims to analyse the scientific production in the Web of Science (WoS) on the relationship between smart cities and the eight urban dimensions defined by the World Economic Forum (WEF) in the period 1990 to 2021, in order to establish which countries lead the knowledge related to the search for sustainable living conditions for people and how this knowledge contributes to improving stakeholders' decision-making.

The methodological steps followed in the study were: (1) Identification and selection of keywords. (2) Design and application of an algorithm to identify these selected keywords in titles, abstracts and keywords using WoS terms to contrast them. (3) Data processing was performed from Journal Citation Report (JCR) journals during the year 2022.

This study identified the authors, institutions and countries that publish the most globally on the topic of Smart Cities. The acceleration in the integration of new technologies and their impact on population conglomerates and their relationship with urban dimensions were also analysed. The evidence found indicates that the USA and China are leading in this field.

This bibliometric study was designed to analyse a knowledge space not addressed in the scientific literature referred to the relationship between the concept of smart cities and the urban dimensions established by the WEF, the identification of new technologies that are converging to promote developments of new ways of managing urban dimensions and propose new knowledge spaces.

This paper explores whether, in the context of university–industry (U–I) collaboration, new innovation strategies can be developed through actors' interactions, the exchange of resources and the co-creation of value for and within the system. In the context of the U–I relationship, the innovation perspective can highlight the need to develop strategies that elicit new formulas of value co-creation, which then facilitate innovation as a result of actor collaboration.

A total of 45 public universities in Spain, representing 95% of the total, participated in qualitative research. Personal in-depth interviews with technology transfer officers (TTOs) were conducted by an external firm; in a second phase, two of the researchers conducted eight interviews with the directors of TTOs in those universities with higher rates of transfer.

Findings reveal that enterprises with a technological focus are strengthening their relationships with universities and attempting to build a university business ecosystem by designing strategies for value co-creation such as co-ownership, co-patenting, and co-invention.

The empirical research is conducted in Spain, and results should be interpreted according to this context. Future research should examine new contexts (other countries) to improve the robustness of the data and enrich the results, thus enabling generalization of the management consequences.

The results provide a means to design strategies under a new collaborative and innovating logic. The theoretical framework contributes to theory, with implications for management.

Ground vibration testing is critical for aircraft design and certification. Fast relaxed vector fitting (FRVF) and Loewner framework (LF), recently extended to modal parameter extraction in mechanical systems to address the computational challenges of time and frequency domain techniques, are applied for damage detection on aeronautically relevant structures.

FRVF and LF are applied to numerical datasets to assess noise robustness and performance for damage detection. Computational efficiency is also evaluated. In addition, they are applied to a novel damage detection benchmark of a high aspect ratio wing, comparing their performance with the state-of-the-art method N4SID.

FRVF and LF detect structural changes effectively; LF exhibits better noise robustness, while FRVF is more computationally efficient.

LF is recommended for noisy measurements.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first study in which the LF and FRVF are applied for the extraction of the modal parameters in aeronautically relevant structures. In addition, a novel damage detection benchmark of a high-aspect-ratio wing is introduced.