The Barriers for Iranian Retailers to Outsource Their 3pl Activities

Abstract

The importance of supply chain management and its related complex activities has been widely noted recently. Many companies desire to enter the international market in today’s competitive environment, and logistics could be a significant strategic tool as well as information source. On the one hand, the emergence of third-party logistic companies have solved many of their entry problems and accordingly gained a great deal of attention. On the other hand, there are many barriers that, despite great need, stop companies from trusting and outsourcing their responsibilities to another party. This paper has surveyed retailers about their problems with outsourcing their logistics activities. While some factors such as a problem in the coordination are not considered important by the retailers, there are some interesting issues like law barriers and the absence of good review that would stop them choosing a third party to handle logistic activities.