Efficient consumer response ECR

Key issue How can collaboration be extended across the supply chain to focus on meeting consumer demand  

Established as a grocery industry initiative, efficient consumer response (ECR) is designed to integrate and rationalise product assortment, promotion, new product development and replenishment across the supply chain. It aims to fulfil the changing demands and requirements of the end-customer through effective collaboration across all supply chain members, in order to enhance the effectiveness of merchandising efforts, inventory flow and supply chain administration. 

The origin of ECR can he traced hack to work carried out hy Kurt Salmon Associates (in the United States) for the apparel sector (Salmon, 1993), and subsequently in the grocery sector (Femie, 1998). Since then, ECR has increased industrial awareness of the growing problem of non-value-added supply chain costs. 

The focus of ECR is to integrate supply chain management with demand management. This requires supplier-retailer collaboration - but in spite of the apparent emphasis on the end-consumer, a lot of the early ECR studies focused on the supply side. Subsequent increased focus on demand and category management, however, has led to the adoption of a more holistic view of the supply chain when discussing ECR initiatives. In addition, ECR has stimulated collaborative efforts that have increased the emphasis on key areas such as EDI, cross-docking and continuous replenishment. 

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Efficient Consumer Response (ECR) and Collaborative Planning, Forecasting and Replenishment (CPFR) both are operations models in the consumer goods industry to ensure delivery capability and avoid stockouts based on an automated replenishment of outlets using product inventory, historic and/or planned sales information at the point-of-sales (POS). CPFR focuses on a close cooperation between retailer and manufacturer. ECR focus on the customer-facing reaction on customer responses in logistics, sales and promotions. 

A Coca-Cola study entided Taking Costs Out of the Grocery Industry Pipeline [17] suggested using a supply chain perspective to reduce costs and improve performance. The efficient consumer response (ECR)... 

Consideration of industry initiatives in the E-commerce areas, such as efficient consumer response (ECR), efficient foodservice response (EFR), warehouse management systems (WMS), strategic sourcing and cross-docking, vendor-managed inventories (VMI), and continuous replenishment planning (CRP)... 

Baraniecka A., 2005, ECR. Efficient Consumer Response. Lancuch dostaw zorien-towany na klienta [Efficient Consumer Response [ECR]. A Consumer-Oriented Supply Chain], Poznan ILiM. 

Anna Baraniecka is Assistant Professor of Business Administration at the Wroclaw University of Economics (WUE), where she received her PhD in Business Logistics. She has extensive experience in supply chain management in the pharmaceutical industry as she has engaged in numerous consulting projects in the field. One of her most important research topics is Efficient Consumer Response (ECR). She has been interested in supply chain maturity issues for several years. She is co-author of a novel supply chain maturity model tailored to the pharmaceutical industry. 

Keywords Supply Chain Management (SCM), Efficient Consumer Response (ECR), dairy... 

Homburg, Ch., C. Engelbrecht and H. Krohmer, 1997. Handel imd Hersteller fiber Efficient Consumer Response (ECR) Zwei unterschiedliche Perspektiven. Mannheim. 

The second initiative to satisfy the consumer is based on what is known as efficient consumer response (ECR). This aims to provide the retail consumer with the best quality service through collaborative supply chain operations. It relies on both the retailer s (viz. Sainsbury s) and the supplier s (e.g. Unilever) supply chain. Thus, the sharing of information between the systems of different partners within that chain is essential. ECR has been a philosophy put into practice within the retail market in Europe since the mid-1990s and Sainsbury s has embraced it. ECR... 

Studies in efficient consumer response (ECR) have shown that cutting out non-value-added products and inefficient promotional activity can reduce overall costs by 6 per cent. (ECR is discussed in Chapter 8.)... 

P G implemented an Efficient Consumer Response (ECR) system in China which has enabled them to improve customer service and reduce inventory. 

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