Detecting the Crisis of Supply Chain Management on E-Commerce for Sustainability Using Q-Technique

Qi Ma,Chi-Cheng Chang,Chin-Tsai Lin

doi:10.3390/su13169098

Abstract

Detecting the crisis of supply chain management is an important subject for the sustainable management of e-commerce. The purpose of this study was to explore the application of Q-technique to the detection of supply chain crises in the imported food industry under the influence of COVID-19. Literature analysis, expert consultation, and Q-technique methods were adopted. We used an expert consultation and questionnaire survey combined with Q-technique using the imported food industry in Taiwan as an example. Fifteen business owners were interviewed to identify priorities for supply chain crises, and 137 questionnaires were collected to determine the strength of each item. By investigating suppliers, distributors, wholesalers, platform operators, online sellers, and logistics operators, this study obtained the priority of supply chain crisis items and the strength of factors for each item. The results show that Q-technique can effectively detect the crisis of cross-border supply chain management, clarifying import food industry e-commerce supply chain crisis items and determining their priority and strength, to help enterprises make emergency decisions regarding supply chain operation, and they can also be used as a reference for enterprises to respond to the crisis.

Highlights

Chain management (SCM) has become an important issue for sustainable enterprise development in the highly dynamic market environment [1,2]
The present study aimed to investigate Q-technique applications to crisis detection for e-commerce supply chain management in the imported food industry in a dynamic environment
Important priority ranking for connotation items for import food industry e-commerce supply chain crisis detection was distributed in positive items and related to resources, comprising 57.4%

Summary

Introduction

Chain management (SCM) has become an important issue for sustainable enterprise development in the highly dynamic market environment [1,2]. Many countries have been locked up and their economies severely impacted by actions to effectively control the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020. E-commerce has greatly helped stimulate many country’s economies facing a major public health pandemic. E-commerce online sales supply chains were greatly affected [4]. Considering e-commerce for the imported food industry as an example, COVID-19 created considerable online sales demands and many risks for the supply chain. Enterprise business performance can be seriously affected. Chain crisis management is the key for e-commerce enterprises [5], and effectively detecting and responding to these crises has become very important

Objectives

Methods

Results

Discussion

Conclusion