مدیریت زنجیره تامین سبز در خرده فروشی مواد غذایی: کرواسی Green supply chain management in food retailing: survey-based evidence in Croatia

1. Introduction Retailers have been identified as one of the most important actors who contribute to changes in consumer consumption patterns (Lehner, 2015). However, a majority of green supply chain management (GSCM) studies has examined samples of manufacturing companies (Golicic and Smith, 2013; Liu et al., 2016; Balasubramanian and Shukla, 2017). Notably, operations research approaches have already been applied various times in retailing contexts achieving considerable progress (for an overview, see Akkerman et al., 2010) and documenting relevance. As evident from sectors listed in related literature (Seuring and Müller, 2008; Ashby et al., 2012; Winter and Knemeyer, 2013; Wong et al., 2015; Darkow et al., 2015), retailers and downstream distribution channels have been addressed less often in empirical research than other members of the supply chain (SC). This is surprising given that retailers play an important role in the SC because they offer customer contact and experience (Kolk et al., 2010). Research concerning green retailing tends to focus on customer interactions (Lai et al., 2010; Lehner, 2015). Despite retailers’ importance in the SC (Ganesan et al., 2009), research on green and sustainability aspects in retailing remains an emerging domain (Erol et al., 2009; Kotzab et al., 2011; Chkanikova and Mont, 2015; Wilson, 2015; Fuentes and Fredriksson, 2016). It appears that the traditional measures of retailers’ competitive advantage (e.g. price, quality, service and store location) have been amended by the influence of retail activities on the environment and society (Wilson, 2015), which also impacts consumers’ purchasing behavior (Kolk et al., 2010). In line with pressure placed on companies and their supply chains (Mollenkopf et al., 2010; Wong et al., 2015), retailers are expected to identify the environmental impact of their processes (Chkanikova and Mont, 2015). In addition to environmentally responsible actions at the store level, retailers must also take responsibility for processes in the SCs (Jones et al., 2005; Kirchoff et al., 2016). This responsibility not only drives environmental awareness along the SCs but also leads to an improvement of SCs’ environmental performance and sustainability in general (Styles et al., 2012). Presenting a detailed overview of sustainability research in retailing, Wiese et al. (2012) state that, to date, much research has focused on the individual aspects of sustainability, such as corporate social responsibility (CSR) in retailing, whereas potential research opportunities lie in more cross-functional analyses that rather account for an integrated or holistic approach to GSCM (Winter and Knemeyer, 2013).