Supply chain resilience and the customer value proposition

Recent occurrences such as the Covid-19 outbreak, the Russo-Ukrainian war, and others have disrupted global supply chains in an unprecedented manner. Consequently, a worldwide supply chain crisis originated, which affected businesses and consumers alike. While end-users were not able to acquire the desired products, companies incurred massive financial losses due to the supply disruptions. Based on this complication, this bachelor’s thesis analyzes and assesses the driving academic theories about supply chain resilience together with first-hand results obtained from semi-structured interviews with supply chain specialists. In particular, this paper sheds light on the factors that necessitate supply chain resilience. Moreover, insights about the most recent resilience-enhancing antecedents are provided, and a possible connection between supply chain resilience and the customer value proposition is examined. The literature review reveals five essential supply chain resilience antecedents, namely, flexibility, redundancy, agility, collaboration, and culture. Furthermore, the secondary research demonstrates that there is a literature gap in identifying the circumstances that demand resilience and a possible incorporation of resilience in the customer value proposition. Thus, while companies had to adapt quickly to the new status quo, research is still lagging behind the current disruptive events. Methods of analysis include comparing the results of extensive semi-structured interviews with the guiding theories of the respective concepts. The collected information demonstrates that theory and practice are mostly consistent, hence validating both. The thesis illustrates that the awareness of vulnerable supply chains increased drastically in the aftermath of the pandemic. Thus, the pandemic prompted a widespread effort to develop a balanced supply chain resilience securing strategically essential items and efficiently sourcing minor products. The findings also reveal that