Alignment of Competitive Strategy with the Scarce Inventory Allocation Decision

As demonstrated by case studies, companies utilize a variety of criteria when allocating scarce inventory to customers' orders [18]. Despite clear intentions, not all of these criteria show direct benefit to organizations, and inconsistent application often hinders execution of strategic objectives. With the development of a prescriptive decision model for scarce allocation based upon competitive strategy literature [17], it is unclear if organizations understand the implications of alignment between their competitive strategy direction and the allocation of scarce inventory to customers.