Reinventing the wheel? A critical view of demand-chain management

Demand-supply alignment as a means for value creation in the marketplace is not a new concept either in the marketing or supply chain management literature. Recent developments in demand chain management (DCM) revamp this issue, which is particularly critical for today's firms. DCM studies, however, remain isolated from wider academic debates and are unclear on the processes required for the demand-supply alignment inside the firm, incurring the risk of becoming irrelevant. Through a systematic literature review and qualitative content analysis, we leveraged the existing knowledge on interfaces between intra-firm departments to identify the dimensions of demand-supply alignment and map the drivers, enablers and consequences of implementing such an alignment. These outcomes, together with theoretical perspectives, are used to improve the idea of DCM, ground theoretical reflections on the concept and suggest avenues for research. This study should interest researchers and practitioners willing to adopt the DCM strategy.