Omnichannel retail operations with ship-to-store and ship-from-store options under supply disruption

Omnichannel retailing strategies are widely used in practice and have been extensively studied in recent years, but few studies have explored omnichannel retailing operations in response to supply disruption in the post-pandemic era. To fill this gap, this study explores whether the adoption of omnichannel fulfillment options (i.e., ship-from-store and ship-to-store options) can mitigate the risk of supply disruption in a supply chain where a retailer orders products from a reliable supplier and a risky supplier, respectively. Under the omnichannel retailing strategy, the retailer's order quantity from the risky supplier may increase or decrease while that from the reliable supplier may increase. Interestingly, it is possible to achieve a win-win-win outcome when the supply disruption risk is high and the market share of the channel offered by the risky supplier is low. Moreover, the entire supply chain benefits from the omnichannel retailing strategy even if it faces a high level of disruption risk.