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Abstract
In the agri-food business, chain management is needed to establish more effective and efficient supply chains and for being more responsive to consumer demands. Food products often consist of different components that can differ in their attributes. It is of high importance for supply chains that they are able to guarantee experience and credence attributes (e.g. food safety) – otherwise, consumer’s confidence will be lost. Depending on different product components and their attributes (shopping, experience, and credence attributes), competitive parity must be achieved. To our knowledge, so far only very little attention has been paid to parity as strategic aim of chain management. The following question arises: If parity considered as strategic aim, how do firms and networks deal with competitive parity in terms of strategic management? Our paper aims to develop a theoretical frame of chain management that combines the aspects of competitive parity with those of chain management in the agri-food business. To fulfil this aim, a literature overview in the field of strategic management was carried out at the firm- and network-level. We derive a frame of competitive parity in chain management and show potential for further research on this topic.