Retailers compete on supply chain

© Khunaspix Dreamstime.

Slightly misleading headline in that this is not so much about retailers’ supply chains competing against each other but the larger retailers becoming direct competitors with their logistics service providers. “This is a play right out of ’Porter’s Five Forces’ where a customer goes upstream and takes business from its suppliers. The buyer clearly is holding the power and the suppliers (i.e. 3PLs) should be concerned with what Porter calls buyers’ threat of backward integration.”