Differentiated Supply Chains Strategies Based on Customer Insights

Supply chains satisfy customers by striving for delivering the right products to the right place at the right time, atthe right quality and at the right quantity within an increasingly faster pace and lower cost. One implication thatcan be made from this is that the nature of markets is the point of departure in both supply chain design andoperations. Given that organizations usually offer a wide range of products and services with different supplyand demand characteristics, one could argue that organizations conduct business in various types of noncoherentbusiness environments. There has been a recognition that ‘one-size-fits-all’ supply chain strategies onlysatisfies a limited number of business environments, and that it is increasingly necessary to develop severaldifferentiated supply chain strategies to satisfy all major business environments in a better way. This paperemploys a descriptive case study approach to illustrate how a case company develops differentiated supplychains based on customer insights. Case study findings reveal that one efficient way to develop differentiatedsupply chain strategies is to combine different supply and delivery methods into supply chain solutions. Bycombining relatively few supply and delivery methods it is possible to develop several differentiated supply chainstrategies