Addresses the perennial issues of effective supply‐chain management ‐ balancing stock inventories, service delivery mechanisms and retaining requisite profit margins while ensuring customer loyalty ‐ against the background of increasing business competition in the 1990s. Considers the potential contributions of partnerships, inventory management, sales‐based ordering and promotion pla…
Examines the reasons driving French food retailers to build major speculative inventories through forward buying from their suppliers. First analyses the origin of the phenomenon and its strategic basis. Then, using the model of postponement‐speculation proposed by Louis Bucklin in the mid‐1960s, explains why forward buying does not conflict with a reduction of in‐store inventories. Final…