Current projects are the following:

Brand - Supply Chain Dynamics in Retailing
Coordinated by: Marc Sachon and Víctor Martínez de Albéniz

The objective of this project is to understand the current trends and challenges in the retail sector and how they are perceived by the different players in the industry.

This research does not follow an empirical approach, i.e. it does not aim to collect statistical data of the retail industry. Instead, we are interested in elaborating a more comprehensive conceptual approach of the retail industry through interviews addressed to the key players, which include manufacturers of National Brands (NB), Private Labels (PL) and Retailers. The information collected in the interviews will be used to develop an analytical game-theoretic model of the strategic behavior of NB manufacturers, PL manufacturers and retailers. This model will allow us to: i) gain insight regarding some of the current developments in the industry, and ii) identify optimal strategies for the key players regarding possible business strategies such as maximizing operating margins and/or market share.

Participation. If you are interested in participating in this research project, please download the below questionnaire and answer some or all of the listed questions. Participating companies will receive an anonymous report summarizing the key findings as well as a picture of the retailing sector.

Download Questionnaire

Supplier-Buyer Strategic Alliances Management
Fábio Cerquinho and Prof. Marc Sachon

Supply base reduction is a key element in the supply chain management. Although there are few doubts about the value added of the supply base reduction, there is a lot of discussion on how to do it. PhD dissertation by Fábio Cerquinho is focused on this topic.

Short Sea Shipping Adaptation to Different Goods Distribution Strategies in Spain
Alejandro Lago

Project coordinated by the Transport Innovation Center (CENIT) of the Technical University of Catalonia with the collaboration of IESE-CIIL as well as companies as DHL and Maersk.

The objective of this research is to assess the feasibility of the SSS usage in the different typologies of distribution strategies in the main logistics families of the spanish international trading market, identifying, on one hand, in which cases and terms is possible, and, on the other hand, defining possible variants of the SSS regarding the current mainstream model.

So far, in order to analyze the SSS potential implementation at Spain, costs and times benchmarkings have been made between a road transport based supply chain and an intermodal based supply chain, assuming same origin and destination in both cases. Nevertheless, the reality of goods distribution is more complex. It is common to adopt different typologies in distribution strategies as a function of the load type and volume, existent infrastructures and carriers needs. This project deals with SSS feasibility under a global approach and its implementation in the complete distribution network.