Impact on bullwhip effect in food industry due to food delivery apps

Abstract

Every supply chain whether services, durable goods or customer goods, is drifting more and more towards E-supply chain using Internet Technology (IT).Such supply chains make use of internet for selecting items, placing their orders and making payments too. Now days the E-supply chain for serving food items is getting very popular because of ease and facilities provided by Food Delivery Apps (FDAs) like Swiggy, Zomato and Uber Eats etc. Use of FDAs has caused variation in demand of food items and subsequently has caused an impact on bullwhip effect. Bullwhip effect is a supply chain phenomenon, which is defined as amplification of demand, as information in form of orders moves from lower echelon to higher echelon of supply chain. This paper attempts to explore the influence of E-supply chain on demand of food items and hence on the bullwhip effect, in food industry, in Indian context. In practice, E-supply chain causes price variations and results in poor forecasts and hence enhances bullwhip effect. But in present scenario, it has been demonstrated that the application of IT will contribute to the reduction of bullwhip effect in long run. Through qualitative and quantitative analysis, it has been proved that due to better information sharing the bullwhip effect has been reduced which generally increases in case of E-supply chain.