Internet companies extensively use the practice of drop-shipping, where the wholesaler stocks and owns the inventory and ships products directly to customers at retailers' request. Under the drop-shipping arrangement, the supply chain benefits from risk pooling because the inventory for multiple...

Internet technology has allowed for a higher degree of decoupling between the information-intensive sales process and the physical process of inventory management than its brick-and-mortar counterpart. As a result, some Internet retailers choose to outsource inventory and back-end operations to...

The widespread adoption of the Internet has resulted in the possibility of disintermediation of information flow and physical goods flow: a company selling a product no longer has to own/deliver it to the customer. As a result, supply chain structures arise in which the retailer is primarily...

Internet technology has allowed for a higher degree of de-coupling between the information-intensive sales process and the physical process of inventory management than its brick-and-mortar counterpart. As a result, some Internet retailers choose to outsource inventory and back-end operations in...