EXPLORING INTEGRATION OF TRADITIONAL RETAILERS IN THE AGRI-FOOD SUPPLY CHAIN: CASE STUDY OF POULTRY SUPPLY CHAIN IN BANDUNG

• Main Author: Fitri Larasati, Puti
• Format: Theses
• Language: Indonesia
• Online Access: https://digilib.itb.ac.id/gdl/view/86219
• Institution: Institut Teknologi Bandung

Traditional retailers have a crucial role in distributing smallholder products to consumers in the agri-food supply chain. In the face of changing market landscape with higher customers demand, these retailers continue to operate within an informal structure with traditional management approaches and limited resource. Their integration and coordination in the agri-food supply chain are expected to improve their survival rate in this evolving environment. However, extant literature on supply chain integration predominantly focuses on existing integration of largescale and more established supply chain actors. Limited studies have been done on how to effectively integrate small-scale actors. Furthermore, significant gaps exist due to past neglection of traditional retailers in the agri-food supply chain integration literatures. This knowledge gaps necessitates further investigation of agri-food supply chain integration, with specific focus on traditional retailers in developing economies. Departing from this phenomenon and identified research gaps, our study aims to explore the present state of supply chain integration for traditional retailers in the agri-food sector. Specifically, this study seeks to answer questions of current integration efforts related to traditional retailers in agri-food supply chain. The study aims to understand challenges, needs, and current efforts for traditional retailers’ integration in agri-food supply chain. Furthermore, this research aimed to answer how traditional retailers can improve their integration in the agri-food supply chain by proposing an integration model that are built according to their unique characteristics, strength, and challenges. Case study methodology was employed as the framework to achieve research objective. Systematic literature reviews of previous literature on agri-food supply chain first done to establish the theoretical knowledge and foundation for the exploration. A case study of poultry supply chain in Bandung, West Java was carried out to collect empirical investigation. Data collection was done through indepth interviews to various actors and relevant stakeholder in poultry supply chain. Observation of traditional retailers’ operation and secondary data from online public data were used to enrich the data. The findings reveal a predominantly disintegrated supply chain in the agri-food sectors. This supply chain is characterized with high dependency on intermediaries, prevalent information asymmetry, price volatility, and power imbalance that adversely affect smallholders. Resource constraint, informal contractual relationships, inadequate infrastructures, and lack of integration initiatives was found as barriers for their integration in the agri-food supply chain. Collective community-based, information sharing, technology utilization, trust-building, power distribution, fair practices, training, and knowledge building are defined as design principles for traditional retailers’ integration. To address issues of traditional retailers, face to integrate, this study proposes integration model through the introduction of new members, food hub. Additionally, a framework for agentbased modelling are developed to help future evaluation of food hub’s feasibility and impact as integration solution. While the modelling was not fully implemented, the developed framework provides a valuable starting point for future work in evaluating this integration strategies before real-world implementation. This research contributes to the limited literature on agri-food supply chain integration with traditional retail context in developing countries. Furthermore, the study extends existing integration frameworks by incorporating unique traditional retailers’ characteristics in it. Established design principles provides important implications for business seeking to engage with traditional retail channels. In addition to the design principles, the proposed food hub model is expected to give directions of policy creation in supporting a more inclusive market modernization. This research lays the groundwork for developing more inclusive, efficient, and resilient agri-food supply chains in developing economies through the proposal of context-specific conceptual solution that leverages the strengths of traditional retail systems and modern supply chain strategies.