The current issue and full text archive of this journal is available on Emerald Insight at:

https://www.emerald.com/insight/1463-5771.htm

Service supply chain: from Service supply

chain
bibliometric analysis to content
analysis, current research trends
and future research directions
Ramji Nagariya and Divesh Kumar Received 3 April 2020
Revised 8 June 2020
Department of Management Studies, Malaviya National Institute of Technology, 28 August 2020
Jaipur, India, and Accepted 5 September 2020

Ishwar Kumar
Assistant Faculty, Entrepreneurship Development Institute of India,
Ahmedabad, India

Abstract
Purpose – The purpose of this study is to carry out the systematic literature review, bibliometric analysis and
content analysis of extant literature of service supply chain (SSC).
Design/methodology/approach – Systematic literature review (SLR) technique was used for identifying the
research papers. In the first step after reading titles, abstracts and keywords and, full-length articles wherever
required, papers not related to SSC were removed. In second steps papers were read more critically and papers
not related to SSC were removed. Finally on 502 papers bibliometric and content analysis was further carried
out. Content analysis was based on the clusters formed by bibliographic coupling. Further, content analysis of
the recent articles revealed the current research trends and research gaps.
Findings – This paper identified the six existing research diversifications in SSC as (1) logistics SSC, (2) model,
framework and conceptual papers, (3) third-party logistics service providers, (4) articles from various
perspective, (5) measurement of quality and performance on services and (6) impact of adoption of technology,
cooperation and branding on logistics service providers. Further, six future research directions are also
provided.
Practical implications – This research provides a clear view of the progression of publication, research
diversification, research themes of six identified clusters, sub-themes of clusters and content analysis of each
cluster. Content analysis of recent articles reveals the current research trend and future research directions.
Originality/value – This is a first of its kind of study which presents the diversification of research areas
within SSC, bibliometric analysis, content analysis and provides actionable future research direction.
Keywords Service supply chain (SSC), Service operations, Systematic literature review (SLR), Bibliometric
analysis, Content analysis
Paper type Research paper

1. Introduction
The role of services in economies of countries is increasingly stressing the need to carry
research in services (Thakur and Anbanandam, 2016). In developing countries, such as
Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa (BRICS), the fast growth of the service industry
is observed (Wang et al., 2015). In 2017, the service sector contributed half to two-thirds of
each BRICS country’s economy. World Bank data indicates that the share of services and
value-added in global GDP is 65.042 % (“Services, value added (% of GDP) j Data”, n.d.).
Service supply chain (SSC) has gained attention and attracted academicians and industry
personnel and many experts have predicted that services will rule the world economy (Arnold
et al., 2011).
Benchmarking: An International
Journal
Conflict of interest declaration: The authors declare that they have no known competing financial © Emerald Publishing Limited
1463-5771
interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper. DOI 10.1108/BIJ-04-2020-0137
BIJ Ellram et al. (2004) established the definition of SSC as “Supply chain management is the
management of information, processes, capacity, service performance and funds from the
earliest supplier to the ultimate customer.” Baltacioglu et al. (2007) argued that the definition
of Ellram et al. (2004) is more leaned towards the manufacturing supply chain management
and defined SSC as “The service supply chain is the network of suppliers, service providers,
consumers and other supporting units that performs the functions of transaction of resources
required to produce services; transformation of these resources into supporting and core
services; and the delivery of these services to customers.” Baltacioglu et al. (2007) also defined
SSC in a simpler and similar way of Ellram et al. (2004) as “service supply chain management
is the management of information, processes, resources and service performances from the
earliest supplier to the ultimate customer.” These definitions indicate that final product or
service delivered to customer provide benefit to the customer and also termed as “core
service” (Baltacioglu et al., 2007). Wang et al. (2015) classified SSC in two ways. Service only
supply chain (SOSC), where products are pure services, i.e. telecommunication, financial
services, mobile applications, tourism and Internet services, etc. A second way of defining
SSC is product service supply chain (PSSC), in this kind of supply chain however physical
products travel down the supply chain but significant consideration is given to services only,
i.e. restaurant and food, mass customization, product design and logistics service providers.
In this paper we follow the definitions of SSC provided by Baltacioglu et al. (2007) and Wang
et al. (2015) as these definitions help in identifying the papers and defining the boundaries of
the research. The application of the theory of value chain can help the service companies in
achieving the strategic objective (Armistead and Clark, 1994). Services are growing and
getting attention but previous researches were more focused on the manufacturing supply
chain (Ellram et al., 2004). The reason lies in the fact that previous economies were more
dependent on manufacturing and farming and the service sector has been developing from
the past four decades (Baltacioglu et al., 2007; Wang et al., 2015). General SCM, product SCM,
servitized SCM and service industry SCM are the four functional areas of SSC as proposed by
Lin et al. (2010). They also mentioned that the product SCM can be made servitized SCM by
adopting some changes in SCM. SSC can be considered of bidirectional nature as customers
play a role of supplier of inputs like ideas, information, minds and bodies (Sampson and
Spring, 2012). It can be seen that with time the authors have started paying more attention to
services and the role of customers in services is highlighted (Sigala, 2014).

1.1 Rationale for the research

Assessing the importance of service industry, the present study tries to explore the existing
research pattern and potential future research directions of SSC management. The novelty of
this research paper lies in the fact that authors have done the literature review of SSC but their
reviews were either limited to timeframe or methodology or specifically considering one
direction of SSC. None of the previous studies has considered all the papers of SSC rather
considered a specific area and has not presented the research diversifications within SSC. The
present study takes care of all dimensions of SSC. This study has applied a combination of
SLR, bibliometric analysis and content analysis making this study different from previous
studies. Bibliometric analysis helps in discovering the intellectual structure and presents a
complete synopsis of SSC. Other differences between this study and previous studies are
presented in Table 1.
Some other literature review in a specific direction like reverse logistics by Guo et al. (2017),
environmental sustainability in freight transportation by Ellram and Murfield (2017),
systematic literature review of transportation and logistics service providers for
environmental sustainability by Centobelli et al. (2017a) and systematic literature review
with focus on EU and for environmental sustainability in freight transportation by Bask and
 Evangelista et al. Thakur and Wang et al. Baltacioglu et al.
Criteria (2018) Liu et al. (2017) Anbanandam (2016) (2015) Cho et al. (2012) (2007) Ellram et al. (2004) Our study

Timeframe 2000–2016 2000–2016 Not restricted Not restricted Not restricted Not restricted Not restricted Not restricted
Focus Third-party Sustainable SSC Comparison of SSC Performance SSC SSC SSC
logistics manufacturing and measurement
SSC of SSC
Methodology SLR SLR LR LR LR LR LR (1) SLR
(2) Bibliometric
analysis
(3) Content analysis
Key findings ICT and Framework for Ten constructs of Categorizes the A framework A framework for A framework for Publication trend, top
Performance Sustainable SSC service supply chain SSC into the for SSC SSC contributing journal,
measurement is SOSC and PSSC performance authors and country.
under-researched measurement Most cited and co-cited
area of SSC papers. Intellectual
structure of research and
content analysis

(continued )
Service supply
chain

A Comparison of
previous studies and
Table 1.

the present study

 BIJ

Table 1.
Evangelista et al. Thakur and Wang et al. Baltacioglu et al.
Criteria (2018) Liu et al. (2017) Anbanandam (2016) (2015) Cho et al. (2012) (2007) Ellram et al. (2004) Our study

Future Influencing TBL’s Selection of Outsourcing, Validity of the Validity of model Validity of model Six research directions-
research factors, green interaction with strategic partners, customer framework in in other service in other service
directions actions and the ternary SSC strategies service, other service industries, (1) Sustainability
industries,
performance, ICT relation, considering the competition, industries generalization of related research
generalization of
for green actions, considering the challenges of service customer model and model, testing of
gap
energy efficiency constraints of properties, welfare and development of a best
(2) Less explored
in freight TBL while Integration of SSC operations risk SSC strategies manufacturing
areas of services
transport, and making SSC and implementation management based model practices in SSC
(3) Dynamics of
shipper’s strategy, of reverse SCM are the areas for
perspective and incentive- practices in SSC future research Market is
collaboration oriented LCA should be in SSC unexplored
were suggested as with ternary considered for (4) More focus
future research relationship are future research required on Multi
directions the areas to be echelon SSC
explored (5) Effects of
branding, latest
technologies,
cooperation,
innovation, social
preferences and
consumer
perceptions on
SSC need strong
exploration
(6) More research
work is required
on Risks
associated with
SSC
Note(s): Where, SSC 5 service supply chain, ICT 5 information and communication technology, SOSC 5 service only supply chain, PSSC 5 product service supply
chain, LCA 5 life cycle assessment, TBL 5 triple bottom line, LR 5 literature review, SLR 5 systematic literature review
Rajahonka (2017) are the literature review in a specific direction of SSC. (Liu et al., 2019a) Service supply
presented a literature review from the behavioral operations perspective. Moreover no author chain
has adopted bibliometric analysis and content analysis technique for exploring SSC in this
way this paper is unique and will present the literature, content analysis and future research
directions for SSC not limited to any specific research direction.
Based on the gaps identified in the literature the purpose of this study is to find out the
answers to the following research questions-
RQ1. What is the publication trend- year wise, country wise, author wise and journal
wise (descriptive analysis)?
RQ2. Which are the most influential research articles – global citation wise, local citation
wise, page rank wise?
RQ3. How the research in SSC is diversified or clustered? And what are the themes of
different clusters?
RQ4. What are the different future research directions?
Systematic literature review (SLR) method is adopted to gather related articles. In the first
step of SLR, articles are identified from the database. The second step is to sort the papers as
per the relevancy to the topic. Following the definition of Wang et al. (2015) articles related to
SSC are selected, articles related to the manufacturing supply chain and not related to SSC are
excluded to get the related articles. The third step is to critically analyze the articles and to
provide synthesize findings. Bibliometric analysis is carried out to get an insight into popular,
influential, reputed articles, most contributing journals, country and different clusters.
Content analysis of identified clusters is carried out to get the research themes and direction
of researches of the clusters further content analysis of recent articles is carried out to get the
recent research trend and future research direction.
This study critically analyzes the literature and presents an overall intellectual structure of
SSC. The key findings of this research will help the researchers in understanding the research
status, structure and the evolution of different themes in SSC. Future research directions
provided in this paper will help the researchers in advancing the research in SSC. To the best of
our knowledge, this is the first study in SSC that applies SLR, bibliometric analysis and content
analysis together. This research work contributes to the SSC area in four ways- (1) No research
has been conducted taking bibliometric analysis into consideration so this research work
provides insights like most influencing research articles, authors, country, etc. of SSC. (2)
Though review papers have appeared previously and all of them focused on advancing the
concepts of SSC but none of them focused on the different research areas and the research
advancements in different area of SSC, this paper takes into consideration both the dimensions.
(3) Previous researches have not focused on content analysis but in this paper content analysis
is also carried out. (4) This research work also reveals directions for future research based on the
content analysis of recent (articles published in 2017, 2018 and 2019) articles.
The rest of the paper is arranged as follows: section 2 provides research methodology used
in this study, section 3 provides descriptive analysis, section 4 presents bibliometric analysis,
section 5 presents content analysis, section 6 presents discussion, results and future research
directions and section 7 discusses the limitations and conclusions.

2. Research methodology
Methods for doing literature review are systematic literature review (SLR), meta-analysis,
bibliometric study and content analysis. In this study SLR method is adopted to identify,
sort and report the related articles (Centobelli et al., 2017a; Duque-Uribe et al., 2019;
BIJ Tranfield et al., 2003). In the first step of SLR, papers are identified from the database. The
first step identifies the keywords and makes a search string to search in a database. The
search string used in this study is verified with the papers identified in preliminary searches.
“supply chain” OR “supply-chain” were found to be the most used keywords. “Logistics” was
also used in more than twenty percent of papers. While “value chain” was used to cover any
possible related paper to supply chain. “servic*” was used with AND with the keywords of
supply chain to search the papers in Scopus. The second step is to select the relevant papers.
Following the definitions of Wang et al. (2015) and Baltacioglu et al. (2007) papers related to
SSC are selected. The third step is to critically examine the papers and present synthesized
findings. This study combines SLR with bibliometric analysis mainly aimed to find
influential research, authors, country and existing research domains. In this paper,
VOSviewer and Gephi software can provide the information of the highest globally cited
articles, highly locally cited articles, most contributing researchers, country and generate the
clusters of papers based on the similar research topic. Both the software are easy to use,
provides better visual diagrams, clusters diagrams, and can handle different data formats.
(Mulet-forteza et al., 2018). Bibliometric analysis enables in identifying the most cited research
paper, impact of citations and timeline visualization of citations (Garfield, 2009; Thelwall,
2008). Content analysis is also carried out on the articles identified in different clusters
obtained by bibliometric coupling. The content analysis helps in identifying the insights,
themes, research diversification, research trends and research gaps from papers classified in
the clusters. Further papers published in recent three years from 2017 to 2019 till the month of
June 2019 (11 June 2019) are studied separately to find the current research trends and future
research directions (see Table 2).

2.1 Search terms and search results

The research area of SSC consists of two name supply chain and service, so to ensure the
coverage of related articles two search strings are used. First a search string for SSC is used
with a combination of keywords, for (1) supply chain 5 ((“supply chain”) OR (“supply-chain”)
OR (“value chain”) OR (“logistics”)) AND (2) service 5 (servic*) in Scopus database. Data is
fetched from Scopus database. Scopus provides Boolean syntax that allows the authors to
combine keywords of search string with operators like AND, NOT and OR for generating
appropriate search results. In our search, the topic SSC can be considered as a combination of
two keywords – supply chain and service. Similar keywords for the supply chain are used with
OR operator and AND operator is used to combine the related articles of SSC. Archambault et al.
(2009) compared the bibliometric data of Web of Science (WoS) and Scopus databases and
concluded that “WoS and Scopus offer robust tools for evaluating science.” Google Scholar is a
different database, however, the quality of data is poor (De Battisti and Salini, 2013). Moreover,
Scopus provides about 20% more coverage than WoS, whereas the results of Google Scholar

For service supply

chain Search string used

Supply chain “Supply chain” OR “supply-chain” OR “value chain” OR “logistics”

AND
Services Servic* was used to cover all terms related to services like service OR services OR
servicing
Table 2. Note(s): Table 2 show the search string used for finding the articles related to service supply chain. The search
Search string used for string was used in combination i.e. for supply chain keywords supply chain OR supply-chain OR value chain
searching articles OR logistics were used AND service* was used to reach near to articles of service supply chain
are inconsistent (Falagas et al., 2008). SCOPUS managed by Elsevier Publishing boasts itself to Service supply
be the “largest abstract and citation database of peer-reviewed literature in the fields of science, chain
technology, medicine, social sciences, and arts and humanities.”
Step-wise procedure is adopted for filtering the data. The search string was restricted to
Title, abstract and keywords. Again the search was limited to the subject area of Business,
accounting and management and documents of type- Article, review and article in press are
selected. Further keywords were selected and search was limited to the keywords for
achieving closeness to related articles. The keywords related to supply chain, logistics and
service are selected from the list. The keywords are selected from the previous papers of the
same area, experts view and the authors’ own experience. Selected keywords are “Supply
Chain Management,” “Supply Chains,” “Logistics,” “Supply Chain,” “Outsourcing,” “Decision
Making,” “Optimization,” “Inventory Control,” “Industrial Management,” “Value Chain,”
“Customer Service,” “Service Quality,” “Transportation,” “Distribution Management,”
“Management,” “Reverse Logistics,” “E-commerce,” “Logistics Services,” “Service Sector,”
“Services,” “Inventory Management,” “Logistics Service Provider,” “Operations
Management,” “Warehouses,” “Inventory,” “SCM,” “Logistics Service Providers,” “Quality
of Service,” “Service Levels,” “Supply-chain Management,” “Third Party Logistics,” “Third-
party Logistics,” “Health Services,” “Logistic Regression,” “Value Chains,” “Supply Chain
Performance,” “Service,” “Service Level,” “Service Supply Chain,” “Logistic Models,” “Service
Supply Chains,” “Supply Chain Integration,” “Logistics Management,” “Web Services,”
“3PL.” Only peer-reviewed papers were to be selected hence papers appearing in journals and
of English language are selected for further review. Total of 3,413 articles appeared initially.
These papers were examined by reading title, abstract and keywords and papers not
related to SSC were removed. Further, these remaining papers were filtered by reading the
articles more extensively. Papers related to supply chain and related to services are selected
otherwise removed resulting in 502 articles. Finally, for these 502 articles, the related
information like article title, author name(s), affiliation, journal name, volume, issue, abstract,
keywords, and references was fetched for bibliometric analysis. Table indicates the inclusion
and exclusion criteria adopted for filtering the articles (see Table 3).
The flow chart shows the research methodology adopted in this paper. Steps of searching,
filtering and further filtering have been described in Figure 1. The next step is divided in two
sub-steps. In first sub-step, descriptive analysis to find, the year-wise research progression,
most contributing journals, most contributing countries, most contributing authors were
carried out. In second sub-step, bibliometric analysis to find, the most influencing journal
(global citation wise, local citation wise and PageRank wise) and clusters of different research
themes are carried out.

3. Descriptive analysis
3.1 Year-wise publication trend
Year-wise research trends indicate that research publication in SSC appeared majorly from
2009 and has been quite stable and somehow progressive from then. Noticeably the number
of articles per year is not sufficiently large indicates that the area of SSC is underexplored.

Inclusion criteria Exclusion criteria

Papers related to service supply chain Paper focusing on supply chain but main focus was not on service
Only peer reviewed papers Papers related to services but not related to supply chain
Only English language papers Conference papers, book chapters Table 3.
Note(s): Table 3 represents the criteria for inclusion and exclusion of articles. Articles related to service supply Criteria for inclusion
chain, peer reviewed and of English language were retained. While articles not related to service supply chain, and exclusion of
related to conferences, other than English language and book chapters were eliminated articles
BIJ Articles fetched from SCOPUS using appropriate Search string, keyword filtration,

language selection (initially appeared 3413 articles)

Articles are filtered after reading abstracts, keywords and titles

Articles are further filtered after reading full text (Finally 502 articles selected)

1. Descriptive analysis- to find publication trend year wise, journal wise, author wise,

country wise

2. Bibliographic coupling- Influential articles, themes of clusters

Content analysis of highly cited Recent trend and content analysis of

papers (TGC > 25) recent papers

Discussion and direction for future research

Figure 1.
Flow chart indicating
the progression of
research Note(s): Fig. 1 shows the flow chart representing the research method adopted from starting to
the end

Number of papers published since 2009 is 417 representing 83% of the total publication that
appeared since 1996. In Figure 2 numbers of articles published till June 2019 (11 June 2019) are
included, so the trend seems to be declining.

3.2 Top contributing journals

The table indicates the top ten contributing journals in the area of SSC. The contribution of
the top ten journals is 38.44% in the total research published in the time span of 1996–2019 (as
on date 11 June 2019). International Journal of Production Economics (IJPE) is the highest
contributor with thirty-eight publications, followed by International Journal of Production
Research (IJPR) with twenty-eight publications (see Table 4).
 Total Service supply
60
chain
50

40

30
Total
20

10

0
1996
1997
1998
1999
2000
2001
2002
2003
2004
2005
2006
2007
2008
2009
2010
2011

2016
2017
2012
2013
2014
2015

2018
2019
Note(s): Fig. 2 shows the articles published in different year. It is evident from the Figure 2.
figure that the number of articles are increasing hence can be said that Year wise
publication trend
service supply chain is drawing attention

Journals No. of articles

International Journal of Production Economics 38

International Journal of Production Research 28
Transportation Research Part E: Logistics and Transportation Review 21
International Journal of Physical Distribution and Logistics Management 21
International Journal of Logistics Systems and Management 17
Supply Chain Management: An International Journal 17
Journal of Supply Chain Management 13
International Journal of Logistics Management 13
Production Planning and Control 13
International Journal of Services and Operations Management 12
Total 193
Note(s): Where, N represents total number of articles i.e. 502 Table 4.
Table 4 shows the number of articles belonging to different journals. International Journal of Production Top 10 Journals
Economics leads the list with thirty eight articles. 193 articles out of total 502 articles were found in top 10 contributing to service
journals as seen in Table 4 supply chain (N 5 502)

3.3 Top contributing authors

Weihua Liu is the highest contributor in SSC with twelve articles and was cited 106 times,
while Wang Yijja Published seven articles and is the second-highest contributor in SSC.
Weihua Liu and Wang Yijja work in the area of logistics SSC and have contributed five
articles together (see Table 5).

3.4 Affiliation analysis

Country-wise publication trends show that United States published the highest number of
articles (93) followed by China (83) and the top ten countries contributed 444 articles out of 502
articles making 88.44% contribution in total published articles. The prime focus of the
authors affiliated to the United States was logistics services and the healthcare sector was the
second most researched area. The Authors affiliated to China broadly focused on different
BIJ Sr. no Author Documents Citations

1 Weihua Liu 12 106

2 Wang Yijja 7 53
3 Xiaoyan Liu 6 53
4 Carl Marcus Wallenburg 6 156
5 Helena Forslund 5 91
6 Ganesh Kothandapani 5 86
7 Angappa Gunasekaran 5 94
8 Gilles Pach
e 5 7
9 Singaram Pugazhendhi 5 86
10 Mervi Rajahonka 5 38
Note(s): Table 5 shows the authors contributing in service supply chain. Weihua Liu leads the list with 12
Table 5. published articles and got 106 citations. Similarly other authors are shown in Table 5 as per the number of
Top 10 contributing published articles. Point can be noted that Carl Marcus Wallenburg published only six articles but received
Authors maximum citations 156

issues of logistics service and the second most researched area was the e-commerce supply
chain (see Table 6).

4. Bibliometric analysis
Bibliometric analysis is mainly carried out to find the highly globally cited, locally cited and
reputed research papers in a research area. Different methods are used to find local citations
and PageRank. Local citation can be achieved by citation or co-citation analysis in
VOSviewer, where VOS means the visualization of similarities. In this paper co-citation
analysis option was chosen for generating local citations. The reason for choosing
VOSviewer over other available software is taken from the explanation for VOSviewer
provided by van Eck and Waltman (2010) “VOSviewer can display a map in various different
ways, each emphasizing a different aspect of the map. It has functionality for zooming,
scrolling, and searching, which facilitates the detailed examination of a map. The viewing
capabilities of VOSviewer are especially useful for maps containing at least a moderately
large number of items (e.g. at least 100 items). Most computer programs that are used for
bibliometric mapping do not display such maps in a satisfactory way.” In the clusters

Sr. no Country Documents Citations

1 United States 93 3,218

2 China 83 673
3 United Kingdom 67 1,000
4 India 44 553
5 Germany 36 807
6 Finland 34 634
7 Australia 26 481
8 Sweden 24 821
9 Italy 19 693
10 Hong Kong 18 673
Total documents 444
Table 6. Note(s): Table 6 shows the contribution of countries in the service supply chain literature. Country with
Country wise maximum number of publication is placed at first position and so on. Last column shows the citations received
publications for the articles country wise
obtained in this research papers are having items approximately hundred so to visualize Service supply
them properly VOSviewer is used. chain
4.1 Citation analysis
According to Ding and Cronin (2011), the reputation of an article can be linked with the
number of citations an article receives by other articles. In more general how many times
other articles are citing a particular article measures the popularity and significance of an
article. Direct citation is the most justified way to measure relatedness as it is the first-order
(direct) indicator while co-citation and bibliographic coupling links are second-order (and
thus indirect) indicators of relatedness (Klavans and Boyack, 2016). In this study citation
analysis on 502 articles shows that 326 articles have cited others in the 502 node network. In
citation network nodes represent articles and are connected if they cite each other and thus
form an intellectual link. Table 7 represents the top 10 highly globally cited papers.
Article of Vickery et al. (2003) got 653 global citations but could not get local citations.
Local citation measures how many times the authors within the network of 502 articles cite
each other. While article of Ellram et al. (2004) could get 332 global citations and also was the
highest locally cited article.

4.2 Co-citation analysis

Xu et al. (2018) explained co-citation in a simple way as “two papers are considered to be
co-cited if they appear together in the reference list of other articles.” If the papers are cited
together it indicates that the paper belongs to nearly same subject area (Hjorland, 2013).
VOSviewer is used for co-citation analysis taking “cited reference” as a unit of analysis. Local
citation indicates the number an article has been cited by others in the 502-node network.
Global citation gives the number an article has been cited in all fields. Local citations are

Global Local
Title of article Author citation citation

The effects of an integrative supply chain strategy on Vickery et al. 653 4

customer service and financial performance: an analysis of (2003)
direct versus indirect relationships
Understanding and managing the services supply chain Ellram et al. (2004) 332 50
Performance contracting in after-sales service supply chains Kim et al. (2007) 219 9
Measures for evaluating supply chain performance in Lai et al. (2002) 202 7
transport logistics
A fuzzy TOPSIS methodology to support outsourcing of Bottani and Rizzi 171 7
logistics services (2006)
The dynamic design of a reverse logistics network from the Min and Ko (2008) 169 6
perspective of third-party logistics service providers
A new framework for service supply chains Baltacioglu et al. 165 36
(2007)
Service capability and performance of logistics service Lai (2004) 164 21
providers
Service quality along the supply chain: implications for Stanley and 159 3
purchasing Wisner (2001)
Supply chain coordination in a market with customer service Boyaci and 149 2
competition Gallego (2004)
Note(s): Table 7 shows the list of articles as per the global citations. Last column indicate the local citations Table 7.
received by the article. It can be seen that in the list first article got 653 global citations but could get only 4 local Top 10 globally cited
citations. Table 7 has sorted the articles as per the global citations papers
BIJ summarized from the results obtained from VOSviewer. Table 8 indicates the top ten papers
according to local citations.
Table 8 indicates that articles of Ellram et al. (2004) and Baltacioglu et al. (2007) was cited
50 times and 36 times within the network of 502 articles respectively.
For PageRank analysis, Pajek file generated from VOSviewer for citation analysis is used
in Gephi 0.9.2 software, which generated the PageRank for the articles. Table 9 indicates the
articles as per the PageRank.
Table 9 represents the articles PageRank wise. PageRank is an indicator of the reputation
of an article hence explains that the article of Ellram et al. (2004) is the most reputed article in
SSC. The second most reputed article is of Lai et al. (2002) and so on.

4.3 Bibliographic coupling (data clustering)

For data clustering, VOSviewer software is used and Bibliographic coupling option and unit
of analysis “documents” are selected for generating clusters. A cluster is formed on the basis
of a similar research theme. Articles associated with a cluster have strong relations with the
publications within the cluster while articles have limited relations with the article of different
clusters (Xu et al., 2018). Weinberg (1974) defined bibliographic coupling as “An association
between two documents established when they are found to have in common a high
proportion of keywords, descriptors, citations or other simple indications of what they are
concerned with.” Through Bibliographic coupling, similarity relationship between articles is
established using citation analysis. It happens when two articles cite a common third article
in their bibliographies. This concept was introduced by Kessler (1963), who considered
scientific works to possess logic and dynamics that may suggest topical relations among
citing articles. From the definitions and explanations, it can be summarized that articles in
different clusters talk about the different research area, so data clustering represents a clear

Local Global
Title of article Author citation citation

Understanding and managing the services supply chain Ellram et al. (2004) 50 332
A new framework for service supply chains Baltacioglu et al. 36 165
(2007)
Service capability and performance of logistics service Lai (2004) 21 164
providers
Procurement of logistics services last minutes work or a Andersson and 20 135
multi-year project? Norrman (2002)
Management of service supply chains with a service- Giannakis (2011) 20 56
oriented reference model: the case of management
consulting
Logistics service provider–client relationships Panayides and So 16 93
(2005)
The impact of electronic commerce on logistics service Delfmann et al. (2002) 15 99
providers
Service supply chains: a customer perspective Maull et al. (2012) 15 40
Collaborative logistics management and the role of third- Stefansson (2006) 14 108
party service providers
Innovation in logistics outsourcing relationships: Wallenburg (2009) 13 82
Proactive improvement by logistics service providers as a
Table 8. driver of customer loyalty
Top 10 locally cited Note(s): Table 8 represents the list of articles sorted as per the local citations. First article got 50 local citations
papers and 332 global citations
 Local Global
Service supply
Title of article Author PageRank citation citation chain
Understanding and managing the services Ellram et al. (2004) 0.036449 50 332
supply chain
Measures for evaluating supply chain Lai et al. (2002) 0.022644 7 202
performance in transport logistics
The impact of electronic commerce on logistics Delfmann et al. 0.022445 15 99
service providers (2002)
Service capability and performance of logistics Lai (2004) 0.022098 21 164
service providers
A new framework for service supply chains Baltacioglu et al. 0.02091 36 165
(2007)
Supply chain evaluation in the service industry: Kathawala and 0.016106 11 52
a framework development compared to Abdou (2003)
manufacturing
Procurement of logistics services – a minute’s Andersson and 0.012001 20 135
work or a multi-year project? Norrman (2002)
Collaborative logistics management and the Stefansson (2006) 0.009868 14 108
role of third-party service providers
Logistics service provider–client relationships Panayides and So 0.009848 16 93
(2005)
The use of third party logistics services: a Sohail and Sohal 0.008724 8 101
Malaysian perspective (2003) Table 9.
Note(s): Articles are sorted as per the PageRank in Table 9. Global and local citations are also provided for Top 10 papers by page
making a comparison among global, local citations and PageRank of articles rank analysis

view of research areas established in a broad research area (Exp-Supply chain is broad area
and researches may be going on in i. Inventory management ii. reverse logistics, etc.).
Figure 3 represents the clusters obtained through bibliographic coupling by VOSviewer.
Based on the co-occurrence matrix the bibliographic coupling is carried out in VOSviewer. It
calculates the similarity measure SMij between two items i and j using the association
strength as (van Eck and Waltman, 2010)
CNij
SMij ¼
TCi TCj

where CNij represents the number of co-occurrence of items i and j and TCi and TCj represent
the total number of co-occurrence of items i and j (Kumar et al., 2019). Based on SMij VOS
mapping technique makes a map. The items having high similarity are placed near and items
having low similarity are placed far from each other. VOS mapping minimizes the weighted
sum of the squared Euclidean distances between all pairs of items using the equations
X
DðX1 ; . . . ::; Xn Þ ¼ Sij kXi  Xj k 2
i<j

Subject to the constraint

2 X
kXi  Xj k ¼ 1
nðn  1Þ i<j

where n denotes the total number of items, D(X1,. . .. . ., Xn) represents the location of item i in a
2-dimensional map and Xi – Xj represents the Euclidean distance (van Eck and
Waltman, 2010).
BIJ

Figure 3.
Clusters obtained by
VOSviewer using Note(s): Fig. 3 shows the image generated by VOSviewer. Different colours show different
bibliographic coupling clusters

In clusters, papers are clubbed based on the similarity of research topics therefore clustering
proves to be an effective tool in discovering different dimensions of topics existing in extant
literature. Total connected articles were found to be 473 and only connected articles were
mapped. The method chosen was an association of strength and weight was given to
citations. Different clusters are represented by different colors. The size of the circle
represents the number of citations an article received.
Table 10 represents the number of papers appeared in six clusters. Maditati et al. (2018)
adopted the criteria of total global citations (TGC) to include reputed research work and Hota
et al. (2020) adopted the criteria of more than fifty global citations and selected 109 papers for
further study. A similar criterion is adopted here and as the number of citations is not high in
the field of SSC hence a criterion of total global citation more than 25 is selected here for
selecting papers for content analysis. A total of 93 papers are selected for content analysis.
There are 18 papers in cluster 1, 23 papers in cluster 2, 22 papers in cluster 3, with only 4
papers cluster 4 is the smallest cluster, 18 papers in cluster 5 and with 8 papers cluster 6 is the
second smallest cluster.

4.4 Analysis of clusters formed

Clusters are obtained by bibliographic coupling in VOSviewer. To draw the theme out of a
cluster generally top 10 highly globally cited papers are selected as it is considered that the
top-cited papers describe the theme of a cluster and authors follow the theme set by the highly
cited papers (Fahimnia et al., 2015; Xu et al., 2018). Table 11 shows the top ten cited papers in
each cluster.
Cluster 1 has a focus on logistics SSC. In this cluster, papers focused on different sub-
themes of logistics SSC such as reverse logistics, after-sales service, comparison of
manufacturing and service industry, and so on. A detailed discussion is provided in content
analysis section. Cluster 2 comprises articles establishing the basic theory, model and
framework for SSC. So it can be concluded that cluster 2 is a well-connected group of
conceptual papers. Cluster 3 is a group of articles dealing with third-party logistics service
providers. Cluster 4 is a group of papers dealing with various perspectives.
Cluster No. of papers No. of papers selected for
Service supply
no appeared initially content analysis (TGC > 25) Theme of clusters chain
1 99 18 Focused on logistics service supply chain
2 79 23 Model, framework and conceptual papers
3 77 22 Third party logistics service providers
4 60 4 Articles from various perspectives
5 60 18 Measurement of quality and performance of
services
6 58 8 Impact of adoption of technology,
innovation and branding on logistics service
providers
Total 433 93 Table 10.
Note(s): Table 10 shows the name of the clusters derived out of the theme of that cluster. In cluster one, articles Clusters formed by
were related to logistics sector only hence based on the emerged theme the name of the cluster was given. bibliometric coupling
Similarly other clustered were named in VOSviewer

Cluster 5 is a group of articles related to measurement of service quality, performance,

financial performance and logistics service quality. Cluster 6 has articles exploring the impact
of the adoption of technology, innovation and branding on logistics service providers.
The study aims to find the research diversification within the SSC and to discover it the
literature was assessed from multiple viewpoints. These viewpoints are drawn from
the emerged papers in six clusters. Each cluster was classified based on the themes of the
research area. After digging deep the clusters and insights from the papers the viewpoints

Cluster one Cluster two Cluster three

Author Author Author

Kim et al. (2007)
Min and Ko (2008)
Boyaci and Gallego (2004)
Wu (2012)
Souza et al. (2002)
de Vries (2011)
Amini et al. (2005)
Colicchia (2013)
Caldentey and Wein (2003)
Chen et al. (2016)
Cluster four
Author
von der Gracht and Darkow (2010)
Saccani et al. (2007)
Lin and Pekkarinen (2011)
Forslund and Jonsson (2007)
Bealt et al. (2016)
Selviaridis and Norrman (2015)
Heaslip (2013)
L€ofberg et al. (2010)
Vega and Roussat (2015)
Cabigiosu et al. (2015)
Note(s): Table 11 presents the ten most cited articles of each cluster
Ellram et al. (2004)
Baltacioglu et al. (2007)
Johnson and Mena (2008)
Anderson and Morrice (2000)
Aronsson et al. (2011)
Sampson (2012)
Dobrzykowski et al. (2014)
Sampson and Spring (2012)
Arlbjørn et al. (2011)
V
eronneau and Roy (2009)
Cluster five
Author
Vickery et al. (2003)
Lai et al. (2002)
Stanley and Wisner (2001)
Panayides and So (2005)
Seth et al. (2006)
Huiskonen and Pirttil€a (1998) Davis et al. (2009)
Mentzer et al. (2004)
Rafele (2004)
Korpela et al. (2001)
Li (2011)
Bottani and Rizzi (2006)
Andersson and Norrman (2002)
Wolf and Seuring (2010)
Stefansson (2006)
Roorda et al. (2010)
Sohail and Sohal (2003)
Delfmann et al. (2002)
G€ol and Çatay (2007)
Sauvage (2003)
Liu and Lyons (2011)
Cluster six
Author
Lai (2004)
Davis et al. (2008)
Wallenburg (2009)
Schmoltzi and Marcus Wallenburg
(2011)
Hartmann and De Grahl (2011)
Tsai and Tang (2012)
Rollins et al. (2011) Table 11.
Gligor and Holcomb (2013) Top cited papers in
Xue et al. (2013) each clusters: citation
measure
BIJ were decided. In six clusters 433 papers were found while in the whole data set there were 502
papers, and 473 papers were connected through nodes in VOSviewer, so approximately 91%
of papers were covered in the study. We have gone through the remaining papers also but
these papers were scattered in multiple viewpoints therefore based on the study it can be
concluded that all the major viewpoints within SSC have been covered.
Table 12 shows the top two contributing journals of each cluster. In cluster 1, International
Journal of Production Research has the highest contribution with seventeen and fourteen
papers respectively out of total 79 papers contributing 39.24% of the total publications.
Similarly, it can be seen in clusters 2, 3, 4, 5 and 6.
4.5 Dynamic co-citation analysis
Table 13 indicates the publications of research in each cluster year wise starting from the year
1996–2019. From Table 13, it can be seen that cluster 1 is receiving publications since 1999.
Cluster 2 is receiving continuous publication since 2003. Cluster 4 emerged in 2006 but
received total 60 publications equal to cluster 5 and cluster 6 (approximately). Cluster 5 is
getting continuous publications since 1996. Cluster 6 emerged after 2008, before 2008 there
was only one publication in 2004. The reason for emerging late may be considered as a fact
that it is measuring the impact of technology adoption, innovation and branding on logistics
service providers. For measuring the impact of these items it requires articles to have been
published earlier related to logistics service providers then only impact can be measured.

5. Content analysis
Content analysis is carried out to get the insights of each identified cluster. For content
analysis the articles with global citations more than 25 are considered. A similar condition
was applied by Hota et al. (2020) to ensure the quality of an article and further studies were

Number of
Clusters Top journals papers

(1) Focused on logistics service supply chain International Journal of Production 17

Research
International Journal of Production 14
Economics
(2) Model, framework and conceptual papers Supply Chain Management: An 7
International Journal
International Journal of Production 6
Economics
(3) Third party logistics service providers International Journal of Physical 9
Distribution and Logistics Management
Transportation Research Part E: 4
Logistics and Transportation Review
(4) Articles from various perspectives International Journal of Physical 6
Distribution and Logistics Management
International Journal of Logistics 4
Management
(5) Measurement of quality and performance of International Journal of Production 7
services Economics
Supply Chain Management 3
(6) Impact of adoption of technology, innovation Journal of Supply Chain Management 5
Table 12. and branding on logistics service providers Transportation Research Part E: 5
Top two contributing Logistics and Transportation Review
journal in each cluster Note(s): Table 12 shows the top two most contributing journals in each cluster
carried out on highly cited papers only. Articles published in the last three years, i.e. in 2017, Service supply
2018 and articles available of 2019 are analyzed separately. The first reason for analyzing chain
recent articles separately is that an article takes time to get citations and recently published
articles could not get the time frame for getting citations. Second reason is that recent papers
set recent research trends so as to identify the recent research trend and area the content
analysis of the recent articles is essential.
The naming of clusters is on the basis of the theme, represented by the papers that
appeared in a particular cluster. For example in cluster 1 the articles were related to logistics
and customer service and hence the name of the cluster 1 was given, “Focused on logistics
service supply chain” similarly the articles of cluster 2 were related to conceptual papers,
discussing frameworks and different models and hence based on the theme of articles, cluster
2 was named as “Model, framework and conceptual papers” and so on.

5.1 Cluster 1 – focused on logistics service supply chain

Cluster 1 is the largest cluster with 99 articles. First article of this cluster came in 1999 and
from 2011 the number of articles in this cluster increased considerably. The articles of cluster
1 have a clear focus on articles related to logistics SSC; further, these articles can be
considered of three different sub-themes under the umbrella of logistics SSC.
First sub-theme of articles focuses on reverse logistics and after-sales services
(Amini et al., 2005; Colicchia, 2013; Min and Ko, 2008). The returned products cause a loss
to the manufacturer as it takes time, money and efforts to collect back these products.

Published articles in each clusters

Year Cluster 1 Cluster 2 Cluster 3 Cluster 4 Cluster 5 Cluster 6

1996 0 0 1 0 1 0
1997 0 0 0 0 0 0
1998 0 0 0 0 6 0
1999 1 0 0 0 1 0
2000 1 1 1 0 0 0
2001 0 0 0 0 3 0
2002 1 0 3 0 2 0
2003 1 1 2 0 2 0
2004 1 1 0 0 2 1
2005 1 1 0 0 1 0
2006 0 2 3 1 3 0
2007 2 3 3 2 0 0
2008 2 5 1 0 2 2
2009 2 3 7 4 0 3
2010 2 2 6 2 6 2
2011 7 10 12 2 4 7
2012 5 7 7 2 2 5
2013 11 4 7 7 7 3
2014 6 7 6 4 3 3
2015 10 4 2 10 2 4
2016 13 11 2 7 4 6
2017 8 7 5 4 1 3
2018 15 7 7 7 4 11
2019 10 3 2 8 4 8
Total 99 79 77 60 60 58 Table 13.
Note(s): Table 13 represents the distribution of articles year wise from 1996 to 2019 of each cluster. In year Paper published in
1996 one article each in cluster 3 and cluster 5 appeared. Last row indicates the total articles of each cluster each cluster year wise
BIJ The number of returned products depends on the type of products and industry. Considering
this as an opportunity many third-party logistics providers have adopted the way to collect
the returned products and started offering services like repair, refurbishment, repackaging
and relabeling. In such cases, third-party logistics service providers are required to calculate
the required number of locations where these services could be accomplished and the
products are delivered back to retailers or customers. Such cases have been explored by
authors for reverse logistics (Amini et al., 2005; Min and Ko, 2008). There are three ways of
reverse logistics to choose from for an enterprise. First is running reverse logistics by
themselves, second is running reverse logistics in collaboration and third is to completely hire
the reverse logistics services (outsourcing). A study has explored the promising way for an
enterprise by multi-criteria decision making (MCDM) technique. Apart from reverse logistics,
after-sales services have huge business potential and are required for durable consumer
goods. After-sales services also help in maintaining long term relationships with customers.
One study has considered the performance contracting case of after-sale service and another
case explored the effect of uncertainty between profit and customer satisfaction.
Second sub-theme discusses miscellaneous issues of logistics SSC and customer services
(Boyaci and Gallego, 2004; Souza et al., 2002; Wu, 2012) and the production-inventory system
(Caldentey and Wein, 2003) and order allocation in emergency (Wei-hua et al., 2011). Liu and
Xie (2013) explored the strategy of service quality guarantee as enterprises outsource to those
functional logistics service providers who can guarantee the logistics service quality.
Sustainability is getting attention nowadays and articles in this cluster have also paid
attention to sustainability issues constituting third sub-theme of this cluster. Sustainability
has three dimensions, i.e. social, economic and environmental dimensions to take into
consideration, but studies in this cluster are focusing on environmental sustainability issues
only (Chiarini, 2014; Chithambaranathan et al., 2015; Colicchia, 2013). Articles have focused
on making a framework for identifying the factors responsible for environmental
sustainability considering logistics or transport supply chain (Colicchia, 2013), while
another article has focused again on environmental sustainability and obtained the data from
catering service providers and suppliers of medical services to hospital (Chithambaranathan
et al., 2015). Another article has compared the manufacturing and service sector and
developed an environmentally sustainable supply chain (Chiarini, 2014). There are other
articles also which studied environmental sustainability but these articles are recent articles
so these articles will be discussed in the section of content analysis of recent articles.

5.2 Cluster 2 – model, framework and conceptual papers

Cluster 2 comprises articles establishing the basic theory, model and framework (Baltacioglu
et al., 2007; Ellram et al., 2004; Johnson and Mena, 2008; Sampson, 2012; Sampson and Spring,
2012) for SSC. Ellram et al. (2004) established the definition of SSC and provided a model that
was based on supply chain operations reference (SCOR) model. In this model, the seven key
service processes were suggested in an interrelated context, these are “information flow,
capacity management, demand management, customer relationship management, supplier
relationship management, service delivery management and cash flow management.” Based
on two previously built SCOR model and the SSC model of Ellram et al. (2004), a new IUE-SSC
model was provided by Baltacioglu et al. (2007). In IUE-SSC model seven key SSC activities
were stressed, these are “Demand management, capacity and resources management,
customer relationship management, supplier relationship management, order process
management, service performance management, and information and technology
management.” Servitized products involve both services and physical products, and a
servitization supply chain model was provided by Johnson and Mena (2008). In servitization
supply chain model ten key activities were suggested as “information flow management,
customer relationship management, supplier relationship management, demand
management, production management, order delivery management, financial flow Service supply
management, return and end of life, product development and risk management.” chain
Sampson (2012) noted three dimension of SSC, first one focusing on services sourcing,
second dimension was producing services, and third dimension was focused on services
involved in product delivery and a new working area was also identified where customer was
in the center of a network of interrelated service providers.
Conceptual papers related to health care supply chain, performance-based contracting in
logistics SSC, global SSC and SSC from customer’s point of view were also identified in this
cluster. As all the articles are related to concept building and advancing the knowledge of
SSC, it can be concluded that cluster 2 is a group of articles discussing concepts, theories,
model and frameworks.

5.3 Cluster 3 – third-party logistics service providers

Cluster three is a cluster of seventy-seven articles and a clear group of articles discussing
different problems of third-party logistics service providers. Article of Bottani and Rizzi
(2006) is the highly cited paper of this cluster. He stressed the need for outsourcing the
logistics services and adopted fuzzy TOPSIS method to select and rank the most appropriate
third-party logistics service provider.
Third-party logistics has attracted significant attention in the last twenty years (Rahman,
2011). Widely used logistics roles include the order accomplishment and the warehouse and
fleet management. Reduction in cost, capital investment and improved operational elasticity
are three factors that inspire the organizations to outsource (Rahman, 2011). Third-party
logistics companies may be considered of asset and non-asset based companies. Large
companies offering a comprehensive range of services face the problem of overcapacity and
underutilization of resources and therefore small third party logistics companies tend to
perform well compared to large companies (Min et al., 2013). Assessing and selecting the
appropriate third-party logistics service provider has been a challenge to many companies.
Understanding the need Datta et al. (2013) presented a list of criteria for the quality
assessment and selection of third-party logistics service providers. It’s important to have the
key performance indicators (KPIs) for measuring the performance of an organization. The
KPIs based on the attributes of the Supply Chain Operations Reference (SCOR) model is
provided and the performance of third-party logistics service provider is measured by
Jothimani and Sarmah (2014).
The third-party logistics service providers (3PLSPs) are categorized as logistics service
integrators (LSIs), logistics service providers (LSPs) and carriers. These types of third-party
logistics service providers have various roles and provide different services. The roles of
these 3PLSP have been explored by Stefansson (2006) and the use of third party logistics
services in Malaysian scenario (Sohail and Sohal, 2003) are discussed in this cluster. In this
cluster, only one article considered risk encountered by 3PLSPs and made an attempt to make
interrelationships between 3PLSPs and customers stressing on the need for a collaborative
relationship between customers and third-party logistics service providers. While bad
relationships with customers can lead to other risks (Govindan and Chaudhuri, 2016).
The relationship in performance and service capabilities of third party logistics is
analyzed by Liu and Lyons (2011). For making a relationship, data is collected from two
countries namely UK and Taiwan and results indicated a significant link between operational
performance and the third party logistics’ financial performance, further concluded as
improvement in operational performances will lead to increase in financial performance of an
organization or customers will be using the services from the organization more. Vu et al.
(2017) concluded that maintaining a strong relationship with employees and healthy working
culture can enhance the social sustainability performance in the food supply chain.
BIJ Some articles also discussed the impact of technology on third party logistics services
(Delfmann et al., 2002; Sauvage, 2003). Big Data analytics positively helps in enhancing the
firm’s capabilities in maintaining data security, innovation capabilities and performance
(Fernando et al., 2018).
5.4 Cluster 4 – articles from various perspectives
For drawing the theme for cluster four, out of ten highly cited papers was not possible as
articles were considered from different perspective and hence all articles in this cluster were
analyzed. In cluster 4 articles are based on case studies or from specific point of view. Articles
of this cluster include different cases of financial service industry, fast food industry, natural
gas supply chain of Ghana and customer service. Only one article was published related to
financial service industry, establishing a ten step framework for outsourcing the work. This
study advises to check performance before and after implementing outsourcing, taking whole
outsourcing lifecycle into consideration (MacKerron et al., 2015).
Articles from different perspective include logistics service provider’s view,
environmental perspective, service-dominant perspective, legal services, under linguistic
preferences and horizontal collaboration in logistics. Two articles explored humanitarian
logistics, out of which one article discussed the functions of Logistics service providers while
second article considered the service triad. So it is observed that articles of cluster 4 are from
various perspectives.
5.5 Cluster five – measurement of quality and performance on services
There are 60 papers in cluster 5 focusing on measurement of quality and performance of
services either in logistics firms or supply chain. A brief discussion is provided in this section
of the articles that appeared in cluster five. Articles related to measures of supply chain
performance for transport logistics (Lai et al., 2002), framework for measuring logistics
service (Rafele, 2004), assessment of relational benefits (Li, 2011) are grouped in this cluster.
Articles related to services quality (Seth et al., 2006; Stanley and Wisner, 2001), customer
service (Huiskonen and Pirttil€a, 1998; Korpela et al., 2001) are grouped in this cluster. So the
theme emerges out of this cluster is justified and indicates a relationship among the articles of
this cluster.
5.6 Cluster 6 – impact of adoption of technology, cooperation and branding on logistics
service providers
Cluster 6 has 58 papers but the papers started appearing from 2008, only one paper appeared
in this cluster before 2008 that was in 2004. In this cluster, articles explored the impact of
technology implementation, cooperation among logistics service providers at different levels
and branding on logistics service providers. Article related to adoption of technology like
radio frequency identification in logistics service firms (Tsai and Tang, 2012) and electronic
integration of supply-side (Xue et al., 2013) was found in this cluster. Cooperation among
logistics service providers was considered in four articles. Schmoltzi and Marcus Wallenburg
(2011) considered horizontal cooperation, inter-firm knowledge sharing was stressed by
Rollins et al. (2011) and Gligor and Holcomb (2013) focused their attention on personal
relationship of buyer and seller. Two papers were related to the branding of logistics services
(Davis et al., 2008, 2009). All the articles are related to logistics service providers indicating a
strong relationship among the articles in this cluster.
Figure 4 explains how the research in the area of SSC is diversified, indicating the themes
of clusters and subthemes existing in the clusters.
5.7 Content analysis of recent articles
Recent articles of 2017, 2018, 2019 and 2020 are selected for finding recent trends of research
in SSC. The reason for selecting recent article is that articles take time to get citation and as in
this paper criterion of global citation more than 25 is adopted so strong chances are that Service supply
recent articles would have been eliminated and recent articles set the trend of ongoing chain
research so it becomes necessary to include recent articles for content analysis separately.
Authors started giving attention to the concept of sustainability in SSC. Sustainability
means using our resources in such a manner that next generation can also use these
resources. Sustainability has three dimensions namely environmental, economic and social,
but limited authors have considered the three dimensions of sustainability in their research.
Tseng et al. (2018) presented a framework for assessing the performance of sustainable SSC
management. His research was based on Taiwan’s electronics manufacturing firm
considering thirty-four factors for environmentally conscious design, environmental
service operations design and environmentally sustainable design aspects. His focus was
on one dimension of sustainability, i.e. environmental dimension. A more comprehensive
framework for measuring sustainability of SSCs on the basis of balanced scorecard concept
considering three dimensions of sustainability was provided by Aliakbari Nouri et al. (2019).
Ol
ah et al. (2019) presented a review of literature to achieve sustainability in E-commerce
business. Though authors have started exploring sustainability in SSC still the articles are
less in this field necessitating more research in this area.
The correct use of supply chain tools can minimize various costs, cycle time and improves
the performance without sacrificing quality but the implementation of supply chain tools in
healthcare supply chain is not widely observed. Martins et al. (2020) studied the role of
governance and quality in Brazilian healthcare supply chain with substantial economic and
social relevance. Their findings revealed that in healthcare supply chain networks, informal
relationships dominate the supply-network governance. Another research in health sector
discovered that cardiovascular disease can be prevented if associated risk factors are
recognized and treated in teenage years. Srinivas et al. (2020) concluded that the negative

Service supply chain

Clusters

Cluster 2 Cluster 3 Cluster 4 Cluster 5 Cluster 6

Cluster 1
Themes of clusters
Articles
Logistics service Measurement of
Model, framework Third party Impact of adoption of
from
supply chain quality and
and conceptual logistics service technology, cooperation and
various
papers performance of
(3PLS) providers branding on logistics service
perspective
1. Reverse services
providers
s
logistics 1. Case study Sub-themes of clusters
1. Model
1. Role of 3PLS 1. Transport
2. After-sales 2. Various
2. Framework logistics 1. RFID
2. Performance of perspectives
3. Production-
3. Conceptual 3PLS like- service- 2. Relational 2. Electronic integration
inventory system
papers dominant, benefits
3. Impact of 3. Cooperation
4. Order allocation environment,
technology on 3. Logistics (horizontal, inter-firm,
logistic service
5. Sustainability services knowledge sharing)
3PLS
provider’s
6. Customer perspective 4. Branding
service

Note(s): Fig. 4 shows the articles of different sub-themes belonging to a particular cluster. In cluster 1, Figure 4.
Diversification of
articles were related to logistics service supply chain largely but were related to reverse logistics, research in service
after-sales issues, production-inventory system, order allocation problems, sustainability issues supply chain
and customer service etc. Similarly other clusters were also belonged to different sub-themes
BIJ emotion in adolescence increases the probability, being in high cardiovascular disease risk
group in later life. Concept of lean is more evident in manufacturing organizations but in
health care, the lean is used to test whether it can improve the environmental sustainability.
Insights drawn by Singh (2019) suggest that the infusion of lean in healthcare will reduce the
waste and hence will help in achieving environmental sustainability.
Supply chain quality management practices have a strong relationship with innovation
and operational performance (OP) while customer satisfaction affects the OP at large
(Hussain et al., 2019b). Logistics service quality (LSQ) has three dimensions as condition,
availability and timeliness. LSQ affects the customer satisfaction and loyalty. In omni-
channel retailing Murfield et al. (2017) conducted a survey based research for buy-online-
pickup-in-store (BOPS) and buy-in-store-ship-direct (BSSD) options. The experiences of
customers were analyzed and it was found that the customers of omni-channel retailing are
unique. In BOPS, the relationship between condition and loyalty are partially mediated by
consumer’s satisfaction while in BSSD, the relationship between timeliness and loyalty is
fully mediated by consumer’s satisfaction.
E-commerce businesses have attracted significant attention by academicians. Lim et al.
(2018) conducted a literature review of last mile logistics in e-commerce supply chain and
highlighted the importance of improved last mile logistics in making a positive societal
impact. In similar business, using the DANP and VIKOR methodologies, Titiyal et al. (2019)
evaluated the distribution strategies for e-tailers under different criterion. This evaluation
could help in selecting distribution strategy in e-business.
The choice of online booking has been the dominant option in tourism industry. Hotels and
lodges get better visibility and the inclusion of information and communication technology
influences demand. Myat et al. (2019) conducted a survey in Myanmar and found that the
hotels and lodges situated far from capital were more dependent on third-party online
booking services and were using these services extensively.
Butt and Ahmad (2019) explored the effect of personal relationship between the mangers
of buying and supplying firms of manufacturing and service sector. The results indicated
that in the presence of personal relationships, the mangers face three types of conflicts: ego,
supplier selection and on accepting late deliveries.
The increased level of competition, supply side disruptions and consumer’s expectations
make the company’s operations challenging. Altogether demanding the firm to be more
flexible in its operations and improve efficiency. Ivanov et al. (2018) identified new flexibility
drivers and categorized them into four categories as “disruption risks, resilience and the
ripple effect in the supply chain; digitalisation, smart operations and e-supply chains;
sustainability and responsiveness; and supplier integration and behavioural flexibility.”
Many authors focused on logistics SSC (LSSC) that comprises suppliers, LSI collecting the
order from supplier, functional logistics service providers actually responsible for delivering
the item to the consumer and customers. Information and product/service flows in both
directions in SSCs.
Suppliers ↔ LSI ↔ FLSP ↔ Customers
Liu et al. (2019a, b) considered a two-echelon LSSC for the loss aversion behavior of LSI
and FLSPs and explored the effects of loss-averse preferences. In his study, he assumed that
logistics service integrator procures logistics service capacity from an FLSP and explored the
impact of the loss-averse preference on the logistics service integrator’s order quantity and
the FLSP’s pricing policy for the case when demand updates. Liu et al. (2018a, b, c, d and e)
analyzed the impacts of cost-sharing on the key decisions of each player in LSSC and the
interaction mechanism of mass customization. The authors suggested that mass
customization and cost-sharing contracts will be beneficial and can improve logistics
service in the one belt one road region. Analysis of LSSC taking decoupling point under
consideration (Liu et al., 2018d), fairness concern (Du and Han, 2018; Liu et al., 2018a; Liu et al., Service supply
2018c) and logistics service integrator’s overconfidence behavior on supply chain decision chain
(Liu et al., 2018b) have been explored.
Crowd logistics is a new kind of business practice in which the individuals can provide
logistics services based on the logistics capabilities and resources available with them using
websites and mobile applications. Carbone et al. (2017) differentiated crowd logistics form
traditional logistics and categorized crowd logistics into four categories based on the services
offered. This research works also identified the types of crowd logistics services those may
pose a challenge or disrupt the traditional businesses.
Humanitarian logistics managements work in adverse situations and face the challenge of
coordination, technological barriers, logistics infrastructure etc. Salam and Khan (2020)
conducted a case study after earthquake in Haiti. They considered three major working group
for their research as non-governmental organization, governmental organizations and
military establishment group. The research highlighted that many resources were
adequately available and there was a cooperation and coordination problem between the
civil-military corporation. East African region also face the challenges of humanitarian
logistics. To improve the responsiveness, the United Nations Humanitarian Response Depot
proposed a new regional depot in Kampala, Uganda. Based on the real case study and
simulations Dufour et al. (2018) summarized that adding a depot in Kampala were
encouraging and reduced the mean cost up to twenty one percent in more than five thousand
different demand conditions.
Logistics outsourcing handles the delivery of product and services and impacts the
efficiency and cost of a SC largely. Thus keeping in mind the importance of the selection of a
right third party logistics company Asian et al. (2019) used Kano model and stressed the need of
improvement in services offered by third party logistics companies in line with the
requirements of Kano model. Third party logistics face challenges in minimizing various costs,
carbon emissions and improving the vehicle capacity rate and managing demand. To help the
mangers in understanding the complications related to 3PLs, Mohanty and Shankar (2019)
used an integrated approach of data envelopment analysis and adaptive linear neuron network
to improve the efficiency of third party logistics providers. In reverse logistics supply chain
(RLSC), the concept of quality management (QM) and information management (IM) can
improve the efficiency of demolition waste management. Jayasinghe et al. (2019) identified that
there is a strong need for the integration of the concept of QM and IM with RLSC.
In recent years major researches are being conducted in logistics SSC and related to
sustainability in SSC. When it is seen industry–wise articles in the healthcare, oil and natural
gas, agriculture, electronics manufacturing company, fresh food supply chain, airline, real
estate and banking have appeared recently but only a few articles have considered the above
mentioned industry specific research. This indicates that most authors preferred their
research in logistics SSC but all other mentioned sectors still need to be explored further.

6. Discussion, results and future research direction

SLR and bibliometric analysis help in getting an idea of (1) how the research is progressing, in
a particular research area (2) the diversification of research in different clusters (3) the themes
of clusters and (4) recent research trend. All these mentioned purposes are fulfilled by SLR
and bibliometric analysis. For bibliometric analysis, VOSviewer was used and bibliographic
coupling resulted in six clusters of different themes. Out of 502 papers, only 433 papers
appeared in six clusters, the rest of the papers were scattered in many clusters so only six
clusters were selected for further study. For selecting impactful researches to be included in
content analysis criteria of papers having more than or equal to 25 citations was chosen for
content analysis resulting in 93 papers. Papers published recently in 2017, 2018 and 2019
BIJ were again selected to be included in content analysis. Recent articles help in identifying the
recent trend and research gaps. So this paper is two steps further than literature review as it
has comprehensive coverage of the topic, provides content analysis of papers that appeared
in clusters, throws light on the recent research trend and provides future research directions.
As the SSC is the comparatively new research area under the umbrella of supply chain
management, so though the articles started appearing since 1996 but a considerable number
of articles started appearing only after 2009.
In this study, it is found that clusters are having different themes. Cluster two forms the
basis of SSC by providing definitions, models and framework for SSC while cluster one and
cluster three focuses on two different dimension of SSC, i.e. reverse logistics and customer
service in cluster one while third party logistics service providers are grouped in cluster three.
Cluster one and three can be concluded to be formed on the foundation of cluster two. Cluster
five is the advancement of cluster one, two and three as it measures the quality and
performance of services. Cluster six looks for impact of technology and innovation adoption
by logistics service providers. Cluster four is the transition from cluster one and three to
cluster five and cluster six.

6.1 Key results

From this study key results can be concluded as: Year-wise publication trend indicates that
though articles started coming from 1996, a significant research growth in SSC is observed
after 2009. The reason behind the growth of service sector in world economy can be linked
with the development of service sector in developing countries also. International Journal of
Production Economics (IJPE) and International Journal of Production Research (IJPR) are the
most contributing journal in SSC with thirty-eight and twenty-eight articles respectively.
Descriptive analysis explains that the top contributing author in SSC is Weihua Liu with 12
article and most contributing country is United States with 93 articles. A further descriptive
analysis reveals that Ellram et al. (2004) is the highly locally cited article within the network of
502 articles. PageRank analysis also reveals that the most reputed article is Ellram et al. (2004)
with the highest PageRank. Though the article of Vickery et al. (2003) got the highest global
citation, this article could not get enough local citations and PageRank score. Clusters are
obtained from VOSviewer applying bibliometric coupling resulting in six clusters. All
clusters are having different themes, Cluster one is the cluster of articles of logistics SSC.
A critical analysis reveals that in this cluster though the articles are related to logistics SSC
but focus areas of articles are different. Authors have researched in reverse logistics,
environmental sustainability, customer service, financial SSC and comparison of service and
manufacturing business. Cluster two comprises papers focusing on models, framework and
concepts of SSC, cluster three has articles related to third-party logistics service providers,
cluster five has articles of measurement of quality and performance of services while cluster
six has articles exploring the impact of technology adoption, innovation and branding in SSC.
Close observations reveal that cluster one and three are formed on the foundation of cluster
two. As the second cluster lay the foundation stone for the first and third cluster by providing
theories, models and frameworks in the SSC. While cluster five and six are related to
measurement and impact of technology, innovation on services and logistics service
providers justifying as an advancement of cluster one and three. Number of articles with
global citations more than twenty-five is ninety-three only which indicates that the area of
SSC is underexplored and has not gained sufficient attention of authors.

6.2 Future research directions

For directions for future research recent articles (appeared in 2017, 2018, 2019 and 2020) are
studied. Apart from the content analysis of recent articles, content analysis of six clusters also
forms the basis for identifying the future research directions. The key future research Service supply
directions are summarized as here: chain
6.2.1 Sustainability related research gap. Sustainability is a hot topic to be applied in SSC.
Some papers have applied sustainability partially. Sustainability has three dimensions to
consider, i.e. social, economic and environmental, but articles are focusing more on
environmental dimension (Centobelli et al., 2017b; Ding et al., 2018; Fan et al., 2017; Garc
ıa-
Dastugue and Eroglu, 2018; Prakash, 2018; Sureeyatanapas et al., 2018; Zhu et al., 2018), while
in hotel supply chain all three dimensions of sustainability have been explored (Hussain et al.,
2019a). There is a need to consider social sustainability along with environmental
sustainability in healthcare industry (Hussain et al., 2018). A better understanding of the
factors for green logistics is essential and needs further research (Sureeyatanapas et al., 2018).
In future, authors can consider all three dimensions of sustainability to apply in SSC.
Ol
ah et al. (2019) defined trade-offs as “a position in which parties benefit and take
advantage of their capabilities to achieve the result they wish by turning negative impacts
into positive impact.” For making a trade-off businesses need to evaluate its strengths and
weaknesses first then according to evaluation trade-offs can be made in order to attain
sustainability. A case of E-commerce business was considered and possible trade-offs
between sustainability dimensions were discussed by Ol
ah et al. (2019). There can be trade-
offs between environment, social and economic dimensions for various businesses
differently, so authors can explore possible trade-offs for the businesses of their choice.
The use of lean six sigma practices in SSC can help in obtaining better sustainability
performances (Zhu et al., 2018).
An attempt for evaluating environmental performance of suppliers of support services in
hospitals and catering services in educational organizations was made and successfully
identified the most suitable supplier based on the various identified criteria. Similar attempt
can be made in other kinds of SSC (Chithambaranathan et al., 2015) and apart from evaluating
environmental sustainability individually, an attempt can be made to evaluate all dimensions
of sustainability.
The impact of green SCM on human health and cultural dimensions on green SCM can be
further researched (Dubey et al., 2017). The personalities of managers play a role in
implementing the environmental sustainability in an organization. Dubey et al. (2017)
suggested a cross-cultural evaluation of the personalities of managers for the green SCM
implementation.
6.2.2 Less explored areas of services. As discussed earlier that SSC is classified as SOSC
and PSSC (Wang et al., 2015). There are industries primarily having service as their product
are termed as SOSC (Al-Aomar and Hussain, 2017; Hussain et al., 2018; Zhu et al., 2018), and in
PSSC though physical product travels in the supply chain but a large attention is given to
services only. Through the literature review of recent articles and articles that appeared in
clusters it is found that logistics SSC has gained sufficient attention in the literature (Davis
et al., 2008; Liu et al., 2018c). This fact can be observed as the cluster 1 and cluster 3 are
broadly dedicated to logistics service providers and 3PLSPs respectively. But still there are
sectors which have not gained proper attention and are less explored.
Though crowd logistics has been a known and well discussed term in business but in
academics it is a new topic to be researched. Crowd logistics has an excitement opportunity
for the practitioners and academicians (Carbone et al., 2017).
There is a need for a framework that integrates forward and reverse supply chain (Dubey
et al., 2017).
Industries like healthcare, oil and natural gas, agriculture SSC, electronics manufacturing
company, fresh food supply chain, airline, real estate, telecom industry, app based businesses
and banking are less explored industries requiring more attention of authors to include these
sectors into their research.
BIJ Mixed methods have not been used in measuring performance of SSC, in future the
authors can adopt mixed method approach while tabulating performance of SSC (Mishra
et al., 2018).
The structure of an organization facilitates or hinders the organization in accommodating
any new policy or changes (Gunasekaran et al., 2015). Further research is needed for the
identification of appropriate structure and managers that can lead to accommodate these
changes (Mishra et al., 2018). Taking a note on limited studies that uses mathematical
modelling and simulation for evaluating supply chain performance, authors can fill this gap
in future (Mishra et al., 2018).
6.2.3 Dynamics of market is unexplored. Market demand is of fluctuating nature so instead
of fixed demand models should be developed considering stochastic demand. Logistics
service integrator generally coordinates with many FLSPs at a time. When demand is
updated and orders are re-assigned to FLSPs by LSI. Now FLSPs need to change their tactics
on the basis of fairness of order allocation by LSI or even some FLSPs may give up the
contract with LSI if they find themselves at loss. This has been the case in China (Liu et al.,
2018c). So before updating an order with an FLSP, LSI should check the capacity of an FLSP.
Two categories of fairness concerns are explained by Liu et al. (2018a), first is distributional
fairness and second is peer-induced fairness. Imperfect information will also create problems
to LSI and FLSPs both. Combining capacity, demand update and fairness preference in future
research may bring more practical results. Similar research can be conducted in other types of
SSC also.
In logistics SSC LSI purchases the capacity from FLSPs but in case of low demand, the loss
may have occurred to LSI, so the option of buy-back the capacity can be considered in future
research (Liu et al., 2019b). Similarly, FLSPs can impose variable pricing if in last moment any
order is inserted as any last-minute order compels FLSPs to change their strategy that is a
difficult task for FLSPs (Liu et al., 2018d). Such conditions may lead to more practical and
interesting areas for future research.
6.2.4 More focus required on multi echelon SSC. Articles are considering only single
logistics SSC in their research so extending to multi-echelon SSC will bring an interesting
competitive environment. Articles related to logistics SSC are considering one LSI and one
FLSP to keep the research work simple but in real practices, there are many FLSPs, so
considering one LSI and many FLSPs will bring the competitive environment to the front.
However few articles have considered the case of one LSI and many FLSPs (Liu et al., 2018c)
so the help in extending from single echelon to multi-echelon SSC can be taken from these
articles and can be applied in different SSCs of authors’ choice. Moreover, researchers are
focusing on logistics SSC but from the perspective of an organization, the research area
is open.
6.2.5 Effects of branding, latest technologies, cooperation, innovation, social preferences
and consumer perceptions on SSC need strong exploration. Brand image and brand awareness
influence the buying potential of a customer. Both of these concepts have been applied in
logistics service industry and B2B services. But as the branding is considered more important
in consumer search, hence the concept in SSC is less explored. The effect of branding in B2B
can be explored by considering questions like What is the viewpoint of upstream supply
chain partners towards branding? How branding can affect the relationship with suppliers?
The point from where branding matters in B2B business? What is the importance of branding
in B2B business if geographical location of service provider is far? (Davis et al., 2008, 2009). In
recent years no study has focused on branding, so considering the impact of branding in
different SSC may open new research areas in SSC.
SSCs highly rely on information, technology and cooperation among the entities of chain.
The technologies are reshaping the procedure of doing businesses. Latest technologies like
machine learning, artificial intelligence and block chain are the technologies to be
implemented in SSCs. These technologies can help businesses in understanding customers Service supply
need and preferences and accordingly will enhance the performance of businesses. No articles chain
considering these new technologies have been published in recent years. However there are
evidences of latest technology adoptions in supply chains (V
eronneau and Roy, 2009).
The cooperation can be horizontal, inter-firm or maybe in terms of information sharing.
The concept of trade-offs in E-commerce business was implemented by Ol
ah et al. (2019)
similar trade-offs can be implemented for cooperation, price policy for information sharing
and cooperation can be explored in future researches.
Effect of innovation and consumer perceptions on the performance of a SSC are not
considered in researches conducted so far. These inclusions can be incorporated in future
studies (Coltman et al., 2011).
Social preferences like fairness preference and reciprocal preferences are the concepts to
be explored in SSC in investment related decisions (Liu et al., 2018a).
Yusuf et al. (2018) conducted case studies in natural gas industries of Ghana and identified
that the companies use financial and non-financial performance measures are used to
measure the performance of the organization. They stressed the need to make a balance
between financial and non-financial measures and identified six main performance
measurement criteria out of which two criteria customer service and financial criteria
proved to the most important criteria of performance measurement. Making a balance
between these measures and conducting the same kind of research in different SSC may bring
interesting results and insights.
6.2.6 More research work is required on risks associated with SSC. In recent articles, only
two articles considered risk related to SSC. First article is related to maritime supply chain, in
this article, port is considered as service provider to shipping carriers. The port can share
market forecast information and can help shipping carrier in deciding his investment
decision. On the basis of carrier’s risk behavior and port’s information sharing attitude (share
or do not share) four scenarios are analyzed. In this article, only one shipping carrier is
considered but in real practice, there are many competitive shipping carriers and also demand
fluctuations are not considered. These incorporations may bring real solutions to the
problems related to maritime supply chain (Lai et al., 2019).
In second article five types of risks (operational, finance, demand, information and supply)
were identified and tested the impact on manufacturing firms and service firms. Results
indicated that manufacturing firms are more affected than service firms when all five types of
risks occur simultaneously. In service firms if information risk is managed then service
quality can be improved considerably (Truong and Hara, 2018). In this article, only five risks
are studied but there can be external risks also like natural disasters, economic downturns
and political uncertainty which needs to be included in future researches to make the study
more comprehensive. It is clear that in recent articles risk is less explored topic in SSC.
Different SSCs are exposed to various risks according to the working of SSC arise the need
to identify and evaluate the impact of associated risks with a particular SSC.
This paper provides six potential future research directions for the researchers in which
further research can be explored.

6.3 Theoretical implications

Knowledge structure of SSC presented in a comprehensive manner will advance the
understanding level and knowledge of research diversity present in SSC. Research diversity
presented in clusters shows the ongoing researches in different dimensions. This is first of its
kind of study that represents the knowledge structure of SSC, content analysis of recent
articles and provides six broad avenues for future research.
BIJ 6.4 Managerial implications
Managers can gain the knowledge of SSC and future research directions. The knowledge of
future research directions will enable the mangers to adopt early changes in their SSC,
become competitive and take the benefit of leading the market.

7. Limitations and conclusions

In this study, VOSviewer and Gephi 0.9.2 softwares are used for generating descriptive
analysis, bibliometric coupling and PageRank. Some other software working on different
algorithm may provide different results. In this paper keywords used may not be
comprehensive, different keywords will bring new search results and different clusters will
also create the need of a new study. In future new dimensions in SSC may make the used
keywords incomplete.
The aim of this study was to gain the extant knowledge of highly cited research work, top
contributing author and country, research themes and actionable areas for future research, in
the area of SSCM. The answers to questions such as research publication trend, top
contributing authors, journals and countries were identified with descriptive analysis in
section 3. In section 4 bibliometric analysis in VOSviewer provided six clusters indicating six
research dimensions within the umbrella of SSC management. Different research themes of
clusters and sub-themes within the identified clusters were extracted by content analysis.
Section 4 provides the answers to second and third research questions. As discussed in
section 6, further content analysis of recent articles revealed the recent research trend and
provides six new directions for future research. This provides the answer to the fourth
research question established in the beginning. It can be concluded that this study could
provide all possible answers to the established research questions.
Moreover, the researchers can take any future research direction of their choice to explore
SSC further and managers can take a note on underexplored areas to take up in upcoming
projects making organizations profitable and the adopted developments and technologies in
these research papers can provide a feasible solution to managers in managing at their levels.

References
Al-Aomar, R. and Hussain, M. (2017), “An assessment of green practices in a hotel supply chain:
a study of UAE hotels”, Journal of Hospitality and Tourism Management, Vol. 32, pp. 71-81.
Aliakbari Nouri, F., Shafiei Nikabadi, M. and Olfat, L. (2019), “Developing the framework of
sustainable service supply chain balanced scorecard (SSSC BSC)”, International Journal of
Productivity and Performance Management, Vol. 68 No. 1, pp. 148-170.
Amini, M.M., Retzlaff-Roberts, D. and Bienstock, C.C. (2005), “Designing a reverse logistics operation
for short cycle time repair services”, International Journal of Production Economics, Vol. 96,
pp. 367-380.
Anderson, E.G. and Morrice, D.J. (2000), “A simulation game for teaching service-oriented supply
chain management: does information sharing help managers with service capacity decisions?”,
Production and Operations Management, Vol. 9 No. 1, pp. 40-55.
Andersson, D. and Norrman, A. (2002), “Procurement of logistics services- a minutes work or a multi-
year project?”, European Journal of Purchasing and Supply Management, Vol. 8, pp. 3-14.

Campbell, D., Gingras, Y. and Lariviere, V. (2009), “Comparing bibliometric statistics
Archambault, E.,
obtained from the Web of science and Scopus”, Journal of the American Society for Information
Science and Technology, Vol. 60 No. 7, pp. 1320-1326.
Armistead, C. and Clark, G. (1994), “The ‘coping’ capacity management strategy in services and the
influence on quality performance”, International Journal of Service Industry Management, Vol. 5
No. 2, pp. 5-22.
Arlbjørn, S.J., Freytag, V.P. and de Haas, H. (2011), “Service supply chain management: a survey of Service supply
lean application in the municipal sector”, International Journal of Physical Distribution and
Logistics Management, Vol. 41 No. 3, pp. 277-295. chain
Arnold, J.M., Javorcik, B.S. and Mattoo, A. (2011), “Does services liberalization benefit manufacturing
firms? Evidence from the Czech Republic”, Journal of International Economics, Vol. 85,
pp. 136-146, No. aron.
Aronsson, H., Abrahamsson, M. and Spens, K. (2011), “Developing lean and agile health care supply
chains”, Supply Chain Management: An International Journal, Vol. 16 No. 3, pp. 176-183.
Asian, S., Pool, J.K., Nazarpour, A. and Tabaeeian, R.A. (2019), “On the importance of service
performance and customer satisfaction in third-party logistics selection: an application of Kano
model”, Benchmarking: An International Journal, Vol. 26 No. 5, pp. 1550-1564.
Baltacioglu, T., Ada, E., Kaplan, M.D., Yurt And, O. and Cem Kaplan, Y. (2007), “A new framework for
service supply chains”, Service Industries Journal, Vol. 27 No. 2, pp. 105-124.
Bask, A. and Rajahonka, M. (2017), “The role of environmental sustainability in the freight transport
mode choice: a systematic literature review with focus on the EU”, International Journal of
Physical Distribution and Logistics Management, Vol. 47 No. 7, pp. 560-602.
Bealt, J., Fern
andez Barrera, J.C. and Mansouri, S.A. (2016), “Collaborative relationships between
logistics service providers and humanitarian organizations during disaster relief operations”,
Journal of Humanitarian Logistics and Supply Chain Management, Vol. 6 No. 2, pp. 118-144.
Bottani, E. and Rizzi, A. (2006), “A fuzzy TOPSIS methodology to support outsourcing of logistics
services”, Supply Chain Management, Vol. 11 No. 4, pp. 294-308.
Boyaci, T. and Gallego, G. (2004), “Supply chain coordination in a market with customer service
competition”, Production and Operations Management, Vol. 13 No. 1, pp. 3-22.
Butt, A.S. and Ahmad, A.B. (2019), “Personal relationship and conflicts in supply chains: exploration
of buyers and suppliers in Australian manufacturing and service sector”, Benchmarking: An
International Journal, Vol. 26 No. 7, pp. 2225-2241.
Cabigiosu, A., Campagnolo, D., Furlan, A. and Costa, G. (2015), “Modularity in KIBS: the case of third-
party logistics service providers”, Industry and Innovation, Vol. 22 No. 2, pp. 126-146.
Caldentey, R. and Wein, L.M. (2003), “Analysis of a decentralized production-inventory system”,
Manufacturing and Service Operations Management, Vol. 5 No. 1, pp. 1-17.
Carbone, V., Rouquet, A. and Roussat, C. (2017), “The rise of crowd logistics: a new way to Co-create
logistics value”, Journal of Business Logistics, Vol. 38 No. 4, pp. 238-252.
Centobelli, P., Cerchione, R. and Esposito, E. (2017a), “Environmental sustainability in the service
industry of transportation and logistics service providers: systematic literature review and
research directions”, Transportation Research Part D: Transport and Environment, Vol. 53,
pp. 454-470.
Centobelli, P., Cerchione, R. and Esposito, E. (2017b), “Developing the WH2 framework for
environmental sustainability in logistics service providers: a taxonomy of green initiatives”,
Journal of Cleaner Production, Vol. 165, pp. 1063-1077.
Chen, X., Wang, X. and Jiang, X. (2016), “The impact of power structure on the retail service supply
chain with an O2O mixed channel”, Journal of the Operational Research Society, Vol. 67 No. 2,
pp. 294-301.
Chiarini, A. (2014), “Strategies for developing an environmentally sustainable supply chain:
differences between manufacturing and service sectors: strategies for developing an
environmentally sustainable supply chain”, Business Strategy and the Environment, Vol. 23
No. 7, pp. 493-504.
Chithambaranathan, P., Subramanian, N., Gunasekaran, A. and Palaniappan, P.K. (2015), “Service
supply chain environmental performance evaluation using grey based hybrid MCDM
approach”, International Journal of Production Economics, Vol. 166, pp. 163-176.
BIJ Cho, D.W., Lee, Y.H., Ahn, S.H. and Hwang, M.K. (2012), “A framework for measuring the performance
of service supply chain management”, Computers and Industrial Engineering, Vol. 62 No. 3,
pp. 801-818.
Colicchia, C. (2013), “Building environmental sustainability: empirical evidence from Logistics Service
Providers”, Journal of Cleaner Production, Vol. 59, pp. 197-209.
Coltman, T., Devinney, T.M. and Midgley, D.F. (2011), “Customer relationship management and firm
performance”, Journal of Information Technology, Vol. 26 No. 3, pp. 205-219.
Datta, S., Samantra, C., Sankar Mahapatra, S., Mandal, G. and Majumdar, G. (2013), “Appraisement
and selection of third party logistics service providers in fuzzy environment”, Benchmarking:
An International Journal, Vol. 20 No. 4, pp. 537-548.
Davis, D.F., Golicic, S.L. and Marquardt, A.J. (2008), “Branding a B2B service: does a brand differentiate
a logistics service provider?”, Industrial Marketing Management, Vol. 37, pp. 218-227.
Davis, D.F., Golicic, S.L. and Marquardt, A. (2009), “Measuring brand equity for logistics services”,
International Journal of Logistics Management, Vol. 20 No. 2, pp. 201-212.
De Battisti, F and Salini, S. (2013), “Robust analysis of bibliometric data”, Statistical Methods and
Applications, Vol. 22 No. October 2012, pp. 269-283.
de Vries, J. (2011), “Supply chain management in health services: an overview”, Supply Chain
Management, Vol. 16 No. 3, pp. 159-165.
Delfmann, W., Albers, S. and Gehring, M. (2002), “The impact of electronic commerce on logistics
service providers”, International Journal of Physical Distribution and Logistics Management,
Vol. 32 No. 3, pp. 203-222.
Ding, Y. and Cronin, B. (2011), “Popular and/or prestigious? Measures of scholarly esteem”,
Information Processing and Management, Vol. 47, pp. 80-96.
Ding, H., Huang, H. and Tang, O. (2018), “Sustainable supply chain collaboration with outsourcing
pollutant-reduction service in power industry”, Journal of Cleaner Production, Vol. 186, pp. 215-228.
Dobrzykowski, D., Deilami, V.S., Hong, P. and Kim, S.-C. (2014), “A structured analysis of operations
and supply chain management research in healthcare (1982–2011)”, International Journal of
Production Economics, Vol. 147, pp. 514-530.
Du, N. and Han, Q. (2018), “Pricing and service quality guarantee decisions in logistics service supply
chain with fairness concern”, Asia Pacific Journal of Operational Research, Vol. 35 No. 5, 1850036.
Dubey, R., Gunasekaran, A. and Papadopoulos, T. (2017), “Green supply chain management:
theoretical framework and further research directions”, Benchmarking: An International
Journal, Vol. 24 No. 1, pp. 184-218.

Laporte, G., Paquette, J. and Rancourt, M. (2018), “Logistics service network design for
Dufour, E.,
humanitarian response in East Africa”, Omega, Vol. 74, pp. 1-14.
Duque-Uribe, V., Sarache, W. and Guti
errez, E.V. (2019), “Sustainable supply chain management
practices and sustainable performance in hospitals: a systematic review and integrative
framework”, Sustainability, Vol. 11 No. 21, p. 5949.
Ellram, L.M. and Murfield, M.L.U. (2017), “Environmental sustainability in freight transportation:
a systematic literature review and agenda for future research”, Transportation Journal, Vol. 56
No. 3, p. 263.
Ellram, L.M., Tate, W.L. and Billington, C. (2004), “Understanding and managing the services supply
chain”, Journal of Supply Chain Management, Vol. 40 No. 3, pp. 17-32.
Evangelista, P., Santoro, L. and Thomas, A. (2018), “Environmental sustainability in third-party
logistics service providers: a systematic literature review from 2000–2016”, Sustainability,
Vol. 10 No. 5, p. 1627.
Fahimnia, B., Sarkis, J. and Davarzani, H. (2015), “Green supply chain management: a review and
bibliometric analysis”, International Journal of Production Economics, Vol. 162, pp. 101-114.
Falagas, M.E., Pitsouni, E.I., Malietzis, G.A. and Pappas, G. (2008), “Comparison of PubMed , Scopus , Service supply
Web of science, and Google Scholar: strengths and weaknesses”, The FASEB Journal, Vol. 22,
pp. 338-342. chain
Fan, W., Xu, M., Dong, X. and Wei, H. (2017), “Considerable environmental impact of the rapid
development of China’s express delivery industry”, Resources, Conservation and Recycling,
Vol. 126, pp. 174-176.
Fernando, Y., Chidambaram, R.R.M. and Wahyuni-TD, I.S. (2018), “The impact of Big Data analytics
and data security practices on service supply chain performance”, Benchmarking: An
International Journal, Vol. 25 No. 9, pp. 4009-4034.
Forslund, H. and Jonsson, P. (2007), “Dyadic integration of the performance management process: a
delivery service case study”, International Journal of Physical Distribution and Logistics
Management, Vol. 37 No. 7, pp. 546-567.
Garc
ıa-Dastugue, S. and Eroglu, C. (2018), “Operating performance effects of service quality and
environmental sustainability capabilities in logistics”, Journal of Supply Chain Management,
Vol. 30, pp. 1-20.
Garfield, E. (2009), “From the science of science to Scientometrics visualizing the history of science
with HistCite software”, Journal of Informetrics, Vol. 3, pp. 173-179.
Giannakis, M. (2011), “Management of service supply chains with a service-oriented reference model:
the case of management consulting”, Supply Chain Management: An International Journal,
Vol. 16 No. 5, pp. 346-361.
Gligor, D.M. and Holcomb, M. (2013), “The role of personal relationships in supply chains: an
exploration of buyers and suppliers of logistics services”, International Journal of Logistics
Management, Vol. 24 No. 3, pp. 328-355.
G€ol, H. and Çatay, B. (2007), “Third-party logistics provider selection: insights from a Turkish
automotive company”, Supply Chain Management: An International Journal, Vol. 12 No. 6,
pp. 379-384.
Govindan, K. and Chaudhuri, A. (2016), “Interrelationships of risks faced by third party logistics
service providers: a DEMATEL based approach”, Transportation Research Part E: Logistics
and Transportation Review, Vol. 90, pp. 177-195.
Gunasekaran, A., Irani, Z., Choy, K.-L., Filippi, L. and Papadopoulos, T. (2015), “Performance measures
and metrics in outsourcing decisions: a review for research and applications”, International
Journal of Production Economics, Vol. 161, pp. 153-166.
Guo, S., Shen, B., Choi, T.-M. and Jung, S. (2017), “A review on supply chain contracts in reverse
logistics: supply chain structures and channel leaderships”, Journal of Cleaner Production,
Vol. 144, pp. 387-402.
Hartmann, E. and De Grahl, A. (2011), “The flexibility of logistics service providers and its impact on
customer loyalty: an empirical study”, Journal of Supply Chain Management, Vol. 47 No. 3,
pp. 63-85.
Heaslip, G. (2013), “Services operations management and humanitarian logistics”, Journal of
Humanitarian Logistics and Supply Chain Management, Vol. 3 No. 1, pp. 37-51.
Hjorland, B. (2013), “Citation analysis: a social and dynamic approach to knowledge organization”,
Information Processing and Management, Vol. 49, pp. 1313-1325.
Hota, P.K., Subramanian, B. and Narayanamurthy, G. (2020), “Mapping the intellectual structure of
social entrepreneurship research: a citation/Co-citation analysis”, Journal of Business Ethics,
Vol. 166, pp. 89-114.
Huiskonen, J. and Pirttil€a, T. (1998), “Sharpening logistics customer service strategy planning by
applying Kano’s quality element classification”, International Journal of Production Economics,
Vols 56-57, pp. 253-260.
Hussain, M., Ajmal, M.M., Gunasekaran, A. and Khan, M. (2018), “Exploration of social sustainability
in healthcare supply chain”, Journal of Cleaner Production, Vol. 203, pp. 977-989.
BIJ Hussain, M., Al-Aomar, R. and Melhem, H. (2019a), “Assessment of lean-green practices on the
sustainable performance of hotel supply chains”, International Journal of Contemporary
Hospitality Management, Vol. 31 No. 6, pp. 2448-2467.
Hussain, M., Khan, M., Ajmal, M. and Ahmad Khan, B. (2019b), “Supply chain quality management
and organizational performance: empirical evidence from telecom industry in the UAE”,
Benchmarking: An International Journal, Vol. 27 No. 1, pp. 232-249.
Ivanov, D., Das, A. and Choi, T.-M. (2018), “New flexibility drivers for manufacturing, supply chain
and service operations”, International Journal of Production Research, Vol. 56 No. 10,
pp. 3359-3368.
Jayasinghe, R.S., Chileshe, N. and Rameezdeen, R. (2019), “Information-based quality management in
reverse logistics supply chain: a systematic literature review”, Benchmarking: An International
Journal, Vol. 26 No. 7, pp. 2146-2187.
Johnson, M. and Mena, C. (2008), “Supply chain management for servitised products: a multi-industry
case study”, International Journal of Production Economics, Vol. 114 No. 1, pp. 27-39.
Jothimani, D. and Sarmah, S.P. (2014), “Supply chain performance measurement for third party
logistics”, Benchmarking: An International Journal, Vol. 21 No. 6, pp. 944-963.
Kathawala, Y. and Abdou, K. (2003), “Supply chain evaluation in the service industry: a framework
development compared to manufacturing”, Managerial Auditing Journal, Vol. 18 No. 2,
pp. 140-149.
Kessler, M.M. (1963), “Bibliographic coupling between scientific papers”, American Documentation,
Vol. 14 No. 1, pp. 10-25.
Kim, S.-H., Cohen, M.A. and Netessine, S. (2007), “Performance contracting in after-sales service
supply chains”, Management Science, Vol. 53 No. 12, pp. 1843-1858.
Klavans, R. and Boyack, K.W. (2016), “Which type of citation analysis generates the most accurate
taxonomy of scientific and technical Knowledge?”, Journal of The Association for Information
Science and Technology, Vol. 68 No. 4, pp. 984-998.
Korpela, J., Lehmusvaara, A. and Tuominen, M. (2001), “Customer service based design of the supply
chain”, International Journal of Production Economics, Vol. 69, pp. 193-204.
Kumar, S., Sureka, R. and Colombage, S. (2019), “Capital structure of SMEs: a systematic literature
review and bibliometric analysis”, Management Review Quarterly. doi: 10.1007/s11301-019-
00175-4.
Lai, K. (2004), “Service capability and performance of logistics service providers”, Transportation
Research Part E: Logistics and Transportation Review, Vol. 40, pp. 385-399.
Lai, K., Ngai, E.W.T. and Cheng, T.C.E. (2002), “Measures for evaluating supply chain performance in
transport logistics”, Transportation Research Part E: Logistics and Transportation Review,
Vol. 38, pp. 439-456.
Lai, X., Tao, Y., Wang, F. and Zou, Z. (2019), “Sustainability investment in maritime supply chain with
risk behavior and information sharing”, International Journal of Production Economics,
Vol. 218, pp. 16-29.
Li, L. (2011), “Assessing the relational benefits of logistics services perceived by manufacturers in
supply chain”, International Journal of Production Economics, Vol. 132, pp. 58-67.
Lim, S.F.W.T., Jin, X. and Srai, J.S. (2018), “Consumer-driven e-commerce: a literature review, design
framework, and research agenda on last-mile logistics models”, International Journal of Physical
Distribution and Logistics Management, Vol. 48 No. 3, pp. 308-332.
Lin, Y. and Pekkarinen, S. (2011), “QFD-based modular logistics service design”, Journal of Business
and Industrial Marketing, Vol. 26 No. 5, pp. 344-356.
Lin, Y., Shi, Y. and Zhou, L. (2010), “Service supply chain: nature, evolution, and operational
implications”, in Huang, G.Q., Mak, K.L. and Maropoulos, P.G. (Eds), Presented at the
 Proceedings of the 6th CIRP-Sponsored International Conference on Digital Enterprise Service supply
Technology, Vol. 66, Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg, pp. 1189-1204.
chain
Liu, C.-L. and Lyons, A.C. (2011), “An analysis of third-party logistics performance and service
provision”, Transportation Research Part E: Logistics and Transportation Review, Vol. 47,
pp. 547-570.
Liu, W.H. and Xie, D. (2013), “Quality decision of the logistics service supply chain with service
quality guarantee”, International Journal of Production Research, Vol. 51 No. 5, pp. 1618-1634.
Liu, W., Bai, E., Liu, L. and Wei, W. (2017), “A framework of sustainable service supply chain
management: a literature review and research agenda”, Sustainability, Vol. 9 No. 3, p. 421.
Liu, W., Wang, D., Shen, X., Yan, X. and Wei, W. (2018a), “The impacts of distributional and peer-
induced fairness concerns on the decision-making of order allocation in logistics service supply
chain”, Transportation Research Part E: Logistics and Transportation Review, Vol. 116,
pp. 102-122.
Liu, W., Wang, D., Tang, O. and Zhu, D. (2018b), “The impacts of logistics service integrator’s
overconfidence behaviour on supply chain decision under demand surge”, European Journal of
Industrial Engineering, Vol. 12 No. 4, pp. 558-597.
Liu, W., Wang, S., Zhu, D., Wang, D. and Shen, X. (2018c), “Order allocation of logistics service supply
chain with fairness concern and demand updating: model analysis and empirical examination”,
Annals of Operations Research, Vol. 268 Nos 1-2, pp. 177-213.
Liu, W., Wu, R., Liang, Z. and Zhu, D. (2018d), “Decision model for the customer order decoupling
point considering order insertion scheduling with capacity and time constraints in logistics
service supply chain”, Applied Mathematical Modelling, Vol. 54, pp. 112-135.
Liu, X., Zhang, K., Chen, B., Zhou, J. and Miao, L. (2018e), “Analysis of logistics service supply chain
for the One Belt and One Road initiative of China”, Transportation Research Part E: Logistics
and Transportation Review, Vol. 117, pp. 23-39.
Liu, W., Wang, D., Long, S. and Shen, X. (2019a), “Service supply chain management: a behavioural
operations perspective”, Modern Supply Chain Research and Applications, Vol. 1 No. 1, pp. 28-53.
Liu, W., Wang, M., Zhu, D. and Zhou, L. (2019b), “Service capacity procurement of logistics service
supply chain with demand updating and loss-averse preference”, Applied Mathematical
Modelling, Vol. 66, pp. 486-507.
L€ofberg, N., Witell, L. and Gustafsson, A. (2010), “Service strategies in a supply chain”, Journal of
Service Management, Vol. 21 No. 4, pp. 427-440.
MacKerron, G., Kumar, M., Benedikt, A. and Kumar, V. (2015), “Performance management of suppliers
in outsourcing project: case analysis from the financial services industry”, Production Planning
and Control, Vol. 26 No. 2, pp. 150-165.
Maditati, D.R., Munim, Z.H., Schramm, H.-J. and Kummer, S. (2018), “A review of green supply chain
management: from bibliometric analysis to a conceptual framework and future research
directions”, Resources, Conservation and Recycling, Vol. 139, pp. 150-162.
Martins, S.A.D.S., Machado, M.C., Queiroz, M.M. and Telles, R. (2020), “The relationship between
quality and governance mechanisms: a qualitative investigation in healthcare supply-chain
networks”, Benchmarking: An International Journal, Vol. 27 No. 3, pp. 1085-1104.
Maull, R., Geraldi, J. and Johnston, R. (2012), “Service supply chains: a customer perspective”, Journal
of Supply Chain Management, Vol. 48 No. 4, pp. 72-86.
Mentzer, J.T., Myers, M.B. and Cheung, M.-S. (2004), “Global market segmentation for logistics
services”, Industrial Marketing Management, Vol. 33, pp. 15-20.
Min, H. and Ko, H.-J. (2008), “The dynamic design of a reverse logistics network from the perspective
of third-party logistics service providers”, International Journal of Production Economics,
Vol. 113, pp. 176-192.
BIJ Min, H., DeMond, S. and Joo, S. (2013), “Evaluating the comparative managerial efficiency of leading
third party logistics providers in North America”, Benchmarking: An International Journal,
Vol. 20 No. 1, pp. 62-78.
Mishra, D., Gunasekaran, A., Papadopoulos, T. and Dubey, R. (2018), “Supply chain performance
measures and metrics: a bibliometric study”, Benchmarking: An International Journal, Vol. 25
No. 3, pp. 932-967.
Mohanty, M. and Shankar, R. (2019), “DEA-ADALINE: an approach to improve the relative efficiency
of 3PLs providers”, Benchmarking: An International Journal, Vol. 27 No. 1, pp. 166-191.
Mulet-forteza, C., Martorell-cunill, O., Merig
o, J.M. and Mauleon-mendez, E. (2018), “Twenty five years
of the journal of travel and tourism marketing: a bibliometric ranking”, Journal of Travel and
Tourism Marketing, Vol. 35, pp. 1201-1221.
Murfield, M., Boone, C.A., Rutner, P. and Thomas, R. (2017), “Investigating logistics service quality in
omni-channel retailing”, International Journal of Physical Distribution and Logistics
Management, Vol. 47 No. 4, pp. 263-296.
Myat, A.A., Sharkasi, N. and Rajasekera, J. (2019), “Myanmar’s tourism: sustainability of ICT to
support hotel sector for online booking and digital marketing”, Benchmarking: An International
Journal. doi: 10.1108/BIJ-07-2017-0200.
Ol
ah, J., Kitukutha, N., Haddad, H., Pakur
ar, M., M
at
e, D. and Popp, J. (2019), “Achieving sustainable
e-commerce in environmental, social and economic dimensions by taking possible trade-offs”,
Sustainability, Vol. 11 No. 1, p. 89.
Panayides, P.M. and So, M. (2005), “Logistics service provider–client relationships”, Transportation
Research Part E: Logistics and Transportation Review, Vol. 41, pp. 179-200.
Prakash, G. (2018), “Exploring environmental sustainability in the food service supply chains”,
International Journal of Intelligent Enterprise, Vol. 5 Nos 1/2, pp. 2-17.
Rafele, C. (2004), “Logistic service measurement: a reference framework”, Journal of Manufacturing
Technology Management, Vol. 15 No. 3, pp. 280-290.
Rahman, S. (2011), “An exploratory study of outsourcing 3PL services: an Australian perspective”,
Benchmarking: An International Journal, Vol. 18 No. 3, pp. 342-358.
Rollins, M., Pekkarinen, S. and Meht€al€a, M. (2011), “Inter-firm customer knowledge sharing in logistics
services: an empirical study”, International Journal of Physical Distribution and Logistics
Management, Vol. 41 No. 10, pp. 956-971.
Roorda, M.J., Cavalcante, R., McCabe, S. and Kwan, H. (2010), “A conceptual framework for agent-
based modelling of logistics services”, Transportation Research Part E: Logistics and
Transportation Review, Vol. 46, pp. 18-31.
Saccani, N., Johansson, P. and Perona, M. (2007), “Configuring the after-sales service supply chain: a
multiple case study”, International Journal of Production Economics, Vol. 110, pp. 52-69.
Salam, M.A. and Khan, S.A. (2020), “Lessons from the humanitarian disaster logistics management: a
case study of the earthquake in Haiti”, Benchmarking: An International Journal, Vol. 27 No. 4,
pp. 1455-1473.
Sampson, S.E. and Spring, M. (2012), “Customer roles in service supply chains and opportunities for
innovation”, Journal of Supply Chain Management, Vol. 48 No. 4, pp. 30-50.
Sampson, S.E. (2012), “Visualizing service operations”, Journal of Service Research, Vol. 15 No. 2,
pp. 182-198.
“Services, value added (% of GDP) j Data” (n.d.), available at: https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/NV.
SRV.TOTL.ZS (accessed 5 August 2019).
Sauvage, T. (2003), “The relationship between technology and logistics third-party providers”,
International Journal of Physical Distribution and Logistics Management, Vol. 33 No. 3, pp. 236-253.
Schmoltzi, C. and Marcus Wallenburg, C. (2011), “Horizontal cooperations between logistics service Service supply
providers: motives, structure, performance”, International Journal of Physical Distribution and
Logistics Management, Vol. 41 No. 6, pp. 552-575. chain
Selviaridis, K. and Norrman, A. (2015), “Performance-based contracting for advanced logistics
services: challenges in its adoption, design and management”, International Journal of Physical
Distribution and Logistics Management, Vol. 45 No. 6, pp. 592-617.
Seth, N., Deshmukh, S.G. and Vrat, P. (2006), “A framework for measurement of quality of service in
supply chains”, Supply Chain Management: International Journal, Vol. 11 No. 1, pp. 82-94.
Sigala, M. (2014), “Customer involvement in sustainable supply chain management: a research
framework and implications in tourism”, Cornell Hospitality Quarterly, Vol. 55 No. 1, pp. 76-88.
Singh, P. (2019), “Lean in healthcare organization: an opportunity for environmental sustainability”,
Benchmarking: An International Journal, Vol. 26 No. 1, pp. 205-220.
Sohail, M.S. and Sohal, A.S. (2003), “The use of third party logistics services: a Malaysian perspective”,
Technovation, Vol. 23 No. 5, pp. 401-408.
Souza, G.C., Ketzenberg, M.E. and Guide, V.D.R. (2002), “Capacitated remanufacturing with service
level constraints”, Production and Operations Management, Vol. 11 No. 2, pp. 231-248.
Srinivas, S., Anand, K. and Chockalingam, A. (2020), “Longitudinal association between adolescent
negative emotions and adulthood cardiovascular disease risk: an opportunity for healthcare
quality improvement”, Benchmarking: An International Journal. doi: 10.1108/BIJ-01-2020-0028.
Stanley, L.L. and Wisner, J.D. (2001), “Service quality along the supply chain: implications for
purchasing”, Journal of Operations Management, Vol. 19, pp. 287-306.
Stefansson, G. (2006), “Collaborative logistics management and the role of third-party service providers”,
International Journal of Physical Distribution and Logistics Management, Vol. 36 No. 2, pp. 76-92.
Sureeyatanapas, P., Poophiukhok, P. and Pathumnakul, S. (2018), “Green initiatives for logistics
service providers: an investigation of antecedent factors and the contributions to corporate
goals”, Journal of Cleaner Production, Vol. 191, pp. 1-14.
Thakur, V. and Anbanandam, R. (2016), “Shift from product supply chain management to services
supply chain management: a review”, International Journal of Services and Operations
Management, Vol. 23 No. 3, pp. 316-346.
Thelwall, M. (2008), “Bibliometrics to webometrics”, Journal of Information Science, Vol. 34 No. 4,
pp. 605-621.
Titiyal, R., Bhattacharya, S. and Thakkar, J.J. (2019), “The distribution strategy selection for an e-tailer
using a hybrid DANP VIKOR MCDM model”, Benchmarking: An International Journal, Vol. 26
No. 2, pp. 395-433.
Tranfield, D., Denyer, D. and Smart, P. (2003), “Towards a methodology for developing evidence-
informed management knowledge by means of systematic review”, British Journal of
Management, Vol. 14 No. 3, pp. 207-222.
Truong, H.Q. and Hara, Y. (2018), “Supply chain risk management: manufacturing- and service-
oriented firms”, Journal of Manufacturing Technology Management, Vol. 29 No. 2, pp. 218-239.
Tsai, W.-C. and Tang, L.-L. (2012), “A model of the adoption of radio frequency identification
technology: the case of logistics service firms”, Journal of Engineering and Technology
Management, Vol. 29, pp. 131-151.
Tseng, M.-L., Lim, M.K., Wong, W.-P., Chen, Y.-C. and Zhan, Y. (2018), “A framework for evaluating
the performance of sustainable service supply chain management under uncertainty”,
International Journal of Production Economics, Vol. 195, pp. 359-372.
van Eck, N.J. and Waltman, L. (2010), “Software survey: VOSviewer, a computer program for
bibliometric mapping”, Scientometrics, Vol. 84 No. 2, pp. 523-538.
BIJ Vega, D. and Roussat, C. (2015), “Humanitarian logistics: the role of logistics service providers”,
International Journal of Physical Distribution and Logistics Management, Vol. 45 No. 4,
pp. 352-375.
von der Gracht, H.A. and Darkow, I.-L. (2010), “Scenarios for the logistics services industry: a Delphi-
based analysis for 2025”, International Journal of Production Economics, Vol. 127, pp. 46-59.
V
eronneau, S. and Roy, J. (2009), “RFID benefits, costs, and possibilities: the economical analysis of
RFID deployment in a cruise corporation global service supply chain”, International Journal of
Production Economics, Vol. 122 No. 2, pp. 692-702.
Vickery, S.K., Jayaram, J., Droge, C. and Calantone, R. (2003), “The effects of an integrative supply
chain strategy on customer service and financial performance: an analysis of direct versus
indirect relationships”, Journal of Operations Management, Vol. 21 No. 5, pp. 523-539.
Vu, H.M., Chan, H.K., Lim, M.K. and Chiu, A.S.F. (2017), “Measuring business sustainability in food
service operations: a case study in the fast food industry”, Benchmarking: An International
Journal, Vol. 24 No. 4, pp. 1037-1051.
Wallenburg, C.M. (2009), “Innovation in logistics outsourcing relationships: proactive improvement by
logistics service providers as a driver of customer loyalty”, Journal of Supply Chain
Management, Vol. 45 No. 2, pp. 75-93.
Wolf, C. and Seuring, S. (2010), “Environmental impacts as buying criteria for third party logistical
services”, International Journal of Physical Distribution and Logistics Management, Vol. 40
Nos 1-2, pp. 84-102.
Wang, Y., Wallace, S.W., Shen, B. and Choi, T.-M. (2015), “Service supply chain management: a review
of operational models”, European Journal of Operational Research, Vol. 247 No. 3, pp. 685-698.
Wei-hua, L., Xue-cai, X., Zheng-xu, R. and Yan, P. (2011), “An emergency order allocation model based
on multi-provider in two-echelon logistics service supply chain”, Supply Chain Management:
International Journal, Vol. 16 No. 6, pp. 391-400.
Weinberg, B.H. (1974), “Bibliographic coupling: a review”, Information Storage and Retrieval, Vol. 10
Nos 5-6, pp. 189-196.
Wu, C.-H. (2012), “Price and service competition between new and remanufactured products in a two-
echelon supply chain”, International Journal of Production Economics, Vol. 140, pp. 496-507.
Xu, X., Chen, X., Jia, F., Brown, S., Gong, Y. and Xu, Y. (2018), “Supply chain finance: a systematic
literature review and bibliometric analysis”, International Journal of Production Economics,
Vol. 204, pp. 160-173.
Xue, L., Ray, G. and Sambamurthy, V. (2013), “The impact of supply-side electronic integration on
customer service performance”, Journal of Operations Management, Vol. 31 No. 6, pp. 363-375.
Yusuf, Y., Gunasekaran, A., Papadopoulos, T., Auchterlounie, W., Hollomah, D. and Menhat, M. (2018),
“Performance measurement in the natural gas industry: a case study of Ghana’s natural gas
supply chain”, Benchmarking: An International Journal, Vol. 25 No. 8, pp. 2913-2930.
Zhu, Q., Johnson, S. and Sarkis, J. (2018), “Lean six sigma and environmental sustainability: a hospital
perspective”, Supply Chain Forum: International Journal, Vol. 19 No. 1, pp. 25-41.

Further reading
“WDI - In 2017, services were the main driver of economic growth in BRICS” (n.d.), available at: http://
datatopics.worldbank.org/world-development-indicators/stories/services-drive-economic-
growth.html (accessed 5 August 2019).

About the authors

Ramji Nagariya is Research Scholar at the Department of Management Studies, Malaviya
National Institute of Technology, Jaipur, India. He completed M.Tech in Industrial Management from
Indian Institute of Technology (BHU), Varanasi. Currently, he is pursuing PhD from Malaviya National
Institute of Technology, Jaipur, India. His research interest includes service supply chain, buyer-supplier Service supply
relationship and sustainability in supply chain. Ramji Nagariya is the corresponding author and can be
contacted at: ramnagariya84@gmail.com chain
Divesh Kumar is Assistant Professor at the Department of Management Studies, Malaviya National
Institute of Technology, Jaipur, India. He holds a PhD in sustainable supply chain and business-to-
business marketing from the Department of Management Studies, Indian Institute of Technology,
Roorkee, India. He holds a master’s degree in business administration and a bachelor’s degree in
mathematics. His research papers are published in the Journal of Cleaner Production, International
Journal of Computer Integrated Manufacturing, Benchmarking: An International Journal, International
Journal of Business Excellence and Journal of Modelling in Management. His research interests include
sustainable consumption behavior, buyer–supplier relationship in sustainable supply chain and
sustainable value co-creation. He is the recipient of the highly commended Emerald-IAM South Asian
Research Fund Award-2013.
Ishwar Kumar is Assistant Professor at the Entrepreneurship Development Institute of India,
Gandhinagar, Gujrat, India. He holds a PhD from the Department of Management Studies, Indian
Institute of Technology, Roorkee, India. He holds two master’s degrees one in marketing and second in
human rights. His research papers are published in the international journals of repute. His research
interests include sustainable consumption behavior, consumer behavior, sustainable supply chain and
sustainable value co-creation.

For instructions on how to order reprints of this article, please visit our website:
www.emeraldgrouppublishing.com/licensing/reprints.htm
Or contact us for further details: permissions@emeraldinsight.com