Physical distribution service: A fundamental marketing concept?

Distributor service quality in Indian SMEs: A bi-directional customer perspective

“…Various researchers (Bowersox et al 1999;Lambert et al, 1999) have also highlighted that successful partnerships and relationship integration throughout the supply chain have the potential to render efficiencies, profits and service. With reference to logistics, the focus of the literature is on traditional measures of customer service such as availability, timeliness and delivery quality (Morris & Carter, 2005;Dahistrom et al, 1996;Emerson & Grimm, 1996;Mentzer et al, 1989). Though these measures are mostly related to delivery, other criteria such as those related to manufacturing unit's evaluation in the areas of customer relationship and communication (Simpson et al, 2002), and manufacturing unit-distributor relationships can be added to evolve more comprehensive measures of customer service.…”

“…Min and Melachrinoudis (1999) developed a model for the relocation of a hybrid manufacturing and distribution facility. In attempt to measure distribution service quality, Mentzer et al (1989) reviewed the physical distribution literature to specify the domain of distributor service delivery and classified according dimensions of timeliness, availability and quality. Although considerable research has been conducted on distributor relationship management or distribution but most of these studies are conceptual in nature or with focus on supplier's perspective.…”

The influence of guanxi on physical distribution service quality availability in e-commerce sourcing fashion garments from China

“…The establishment and continuous monitoring of key performance indicators allow users to compare achieved and expected service levels, with examples of such measures include delivery timeliness and accuracy, order fill rates and inventory turns (Wilding and Juriado, 2004). Mentzer et al (1989) synthesize 26 elements of physical distribution and customer service that have been reported in the logistics literature over more than two decades to arrive at a three dimensional model. Rabinovich and Bailey (2004) refer to it as the three tangible result aspects of product availability, timeliness in the duration of order delivery cycle, and reliability in order fulfilment.…”

“…Stockouts are believed to have a significant negative impact on customer satisfaction and loyalty but it is difficult to quantify the financial impact of these lost sales (Keebler et al, 1999). Reliability is an overarching measure (Mentzer et al 1989), which captures the ability of the retailer to maintain the performance of PDS and the customer's perception of PDS performance (Hutchison and Stolle 1968). This means that the improvement of PDS performance could be achieved by improving product availability, a core requirement for connecting internal transportation to onward international methods of transport.…”

The impacts of service quality and customer satisfaction in the e-commerce context

“…In a B2C (business-to-customer) context, three dimensions including availability of products, timeliness of delivery and quality of delivery can be used to measure the physical distribution service quality (PDSQ, [22]). Communication was added as the fourth dimension emphasizing the importance of order status information in improving SQ [23].…”