The project aims at analysing an underinvestigated context: the digitalization of agrifood wholesale markets
During the Covid-19 pandemic these markets emerge to be one of the weakest links of the supply chain and far from digitalization. Our research aims at sheding light on these markets and their digital adoption to support the transformation and to enhance the effectiveness of the entire value chain.
In 2020 lockdowns due to the Covid-19 pandemic accelerated the route to digitalization of many supply chains. Transactions, relations and business activities were enabled by, and occured on, digital platforms.
Out of the emergency, the “new normal” will be characterized by the permanence of these new arrangements and by a mesh of traditional and novel digital supply chain setups. Digital multi-sided platforms promise to increase the efficiency of transactions, to optimize logistics, to decrease the environmental impact due to the transit of people and physical items.
The project aims at tackling topics connatural to this transformation, namely:
a. understanding the strategic implications of digital multi-sided platforms as means to conduct transactions and communication among nodes in “physical” value chains;
b. according to a design-science approach, developing and validating a model of a platform that can intermediate actors in a variety of supply chains. The project does so with an empirical focus on a specific area: that of agrifood wholesale markets
