Barriers to sustainable supply chain flexibility during sales promotions

In today’s market, sales promotional schemes have spun out to be essential for promoting outfits. Nonetheless, due to the sudden ascent in sales, the subsequent demand uncertainty calls for the high flexibility in supply chains. The present work examines the barriers to flexibility in the Indian automobile supply chains under such an environment from a sustainability viewpoint, an indispensable element of the present-day supply chains. In view of the literature and the descriptive survey led, 20 barriers have been identified. Through the analytical investigation directed, a numerical index value for the sustainable supply chain flexibility barriers is developed via graph-theoretical and matrix approach. Findings, along with the sensitivity analysis, conducted establish that the barriers at the supply chain’s procurement function have the highest impact in inhibiting the sustainable supply chain flexibility, thus significantly affecting the firm performance during sales promotional schemes. The obtained barrier index can be utilised for assessing the performance of all the companies across the industry. The model proposed offers valuable discernments to practicing officials in focusing on the significant barriers. This study augments the existing literature by linking the supply chain flexibility, Sustainability, and Sales promotions and thus clubs the three independent research streams.