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John K. Harris: John K. Harris is an Analyst at Deakin University, Geelong, Victoria, Australia
Paula M.C. Swatman: Paula M.C. Swatman is the Director of the Interactive Information Institute, RMIT University, Melbourne, Australia
Sherah Kurnia: Sherah Kurnia is a PhD candidate at the School of Information Management and Systems, Monash University, Australia
Introduction
Efficient consumer response (ECR) originated in the USA in 1992 as a direct result of threats from alternative store "formats" (or types) and their supply chains (McKinsey & Co. 1992) which highlighted major inefficiencies within the supermarket and its supply chain (Kurt Salmon Associates, 1993). In order to survive, the US grocery industry leaders took an initiative to study how to improve the performance of the supermarket supply chains in 1992. As a result of their study, the ECR initiative was established, and the term "efficient consumer response" (ECR) was first introduced at the US Food Marketing Institute Conference in January 1993 (Robins, 1994). This ECR initiative is concerned with transforming the grocery supply chain from a "push system" to a "pull system" - where trading partners form new alliance relationships and the replenishment of store products is initiated by the point of sale (PoS) data.
The concept on which ECR is basedactually originated from the quick response (QR) strategy, already existing in the textile and apparel industries (Cooke, 1994; Fiorito et al., 1995). QR, in turn, is based on the manufacturing just-in-time (JIT) concept (Ellram et al., 1989; Fiorito et al., 1995; Knill, 1990). The JIT concept was simple: to deliver raw material to production areas in the exact required amount at the precise time it was needed. The use of raw material pulls new raw material into the production process. During the mid-1980s the JIT manufacturing concept was applied to the US textile and apparel industries in an attempt to combat market penetration by overseas manufacturers. This textile and apparel industries initiative was termed "quick response" and attempted to reduce the amount of inventory held within the apparel supply chain. Quick response required the retailer to share point-of-sale-scanned data with manufacturers to improve the flow of product through the supply chain. The grocery industry noted the success of the quick response approach to managing supply chain data and proposed a...