Citation:
Rexhausen, Daniel, Richard Pibernik, and Gernot Kaiser. "Customer-Facing Supply Chain Practices -- The Impact of Demand and Distribution Management on Supply Chain Success." Journal of Operations Management 30.4 (2012): 269-81. Print.

Research Classification:
The authors of this research performed an empirical based study and outlined three objectives to their study:
1. …to provide empirical evidence of whether or not demand management (DeM) does indeed have such a substantial positive impact on supply chain performance;
2. …the simultaneous evaluation of the impact of customer-facing SCM practices related to both DeM and distribution management (DiM);
3. …the analysis of a potentially existing relationship between DeM and DiM, (p270 et al. 1-3).
To meet the objectives of their study, the authors “identif[ied] relevant practices to DeM and DiM” through literature reviews and expert interviews, and from here, the authors created a conceptual model and utilized the partial least squares to test their hypothesis, (p269 -70).

Statement of Problem:
This journal article aims to examine the “relative impact of relative practices associated with demand and distribution management,” (p 269). Defined by the authors as “…the ability of a company to understand customer demand and requirements and balance them against the capabilities of the supply chain,” demand management (DeM) is becoming more and more popular in the operations management field; however, DeM has not been comprehensively analyzed in terms of supply chain performance. Moreover, DeM is more than the traditional demand forecasting; the field of DeM has been expanded to include customer and product segmentation and sales and operations planning, (p 269).

The authors stated their hypotheses as follows:
H1: The extent to which effective forecasting practices are implemented is positively