Search results

The purpose of this paper is to determine the performance impact for small, local retailers by the means of category management (CM) practice and implementation. The authors utilized survey methodology to investigate both the immediate and cumulative impact of CM on several regional retailers.

The results suggest CM practices have a positive impact on the performance of small, local retailers. category captain (CC) and minor supplier (MS) performances are also positively related to CM execution. CM practices, however, do not have a direct significant influence on MS performance, but rather have a cumulative impact through CC and CM performances.

Small retailers should implement CM principles informally to match with their specific limited resources and management structures. Additionally, results from this study also suggest that local retailers may benefit from leveraging suppliers through tighter relationships encompassed within CM.

This research is the first to empirically test the immediate and cumulative impacts of CM practices on small, local retailers, and to determine their implications. Cumulatively, small retailers have a large impact on developed economies with a particularly large impact on employment, therefore major retail initiatives such as CM merit scholarly attention.

The objective of this study is to mitigate the risks of a blood shortage. The authors designed two simulation studies to identify the superior methodology that can decrease the impact of a massive national donor shortage.

The simulation designs are triggered by the COVID-19 pandemic. The first simulation examines the company’s choice of strategic partners (regionally and nationally), and the second inspects creating a national coordinated effort to organize a pooled blood inventory that would require blood centers to contribute a small percentage of their monthly donations to become a member.

The results indicate that both methods can significantly manage the risk of stockouts regardless of the availability of safety inventory in a blood center; however, although more effective in reducing the number of shortages per month, creating a national blood pool causes the shortages to be recognized earlier than desired.

The authors contribute to the literature by focusing on the potential risk of blood shortage because it directly impacts healthcare, hospitals’ costs and their ability to provide care. Though a handful of researchers have targeted the study of the blood supply chain, there is not any article that is similar to this study.