Abstract
PurposeThe COVID-19 pandemic interrupts the supply chain of products around the world. The supply chains of beauty and personal care products in Bangladesh are also heavily interrupted during this pandemic. While these products are perceived as essential by mass people, retailers are struggling to get the supply of the products and maintain a smooth delivery to the people. Considering such facts, the purposes of the study are to identify how the supply of retailers of these products is interrupted and how they can overcome the interruptions to ensure supply resilience.Design/methodology/approachA case study method has been used in this study. The data has been collected through interviews from 16 retailers of beauty and personal care products.FindingsThe results show that the supply of retailers of beauty and personal care products is interrupted in several ways. These include product shortage, limited delivery service, interruption of supplier payment, limited credit facility and irregularity in product delivery. To minimize the impacts of the interruptions and enhance supply resilience, retailers can undertake several strategies including intensive interactions and developing cooperation with the distributors and manufacturers, ordering bulk quantity, formulating an adjusted credit ratio and focusing on product availability over brand preference.Research limitations/implicationsThe context of this study is limited to the beauty and personal care products of Bangladesh. Further study can be conducted in other countries and also supply chains of other products to enhance the generalizability of the findings of this study.Practical implicationsSupply interruptions are identified, and strategies are suggested to ensure the supply resilience of retailers of beauty and personal care products. If proposed strategies are implemented by retailers of these products, supply interruptions can be minimized.Originality/valueThe study contributes to the knowledge of the retail supply chain during a pandemic. It also contributes to the supply management and resilience of retailers. As the context is a developing country, the study also contributes to the literature on developing countries.
Highlights
The COVID-19 outbreak has a substantial negative impact on both public health issues such as illness and mental well-being and other economic activities such as employment and flow of commercial supply chain
The findings are presented in two subsections: how the supply of retailers of beauty and personal care products is interrupted during COVID-19 and potential strategies to improve the supply resilience
This study reveals five main effects of the COVID-19 pandemic in supply of beauty and personal care products
Summary
The COVID-19 outbreak has a substantial negative impact on both public health issues such as illness and mental well-being and other economic activities such as employment and flow of commercial supply chain. Academicians are researching how to recover the loss that businesses and their supply chains are facing during the situation. This outbreak has impacted almost all the supply chains of the globe as many players are involved from various locations in a supply chain (Paul and Chowdhury, 2020a). Supply chains face many disruptions (Paul et al, 2014a, 2015a; Pettit et al, 2010). The current pandemic is extraordinary and breaks all the previous records in terms of the severity of a supply chain disruption on the operation (Ivanov, 2020a, b; Lin et al, 2020). All the players in a supply chain are affected by this outbreak (Chowdhury et al, 2020)
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