Re-enchanting logistics: the cases of pick-your-own farm and large retail stores

ABSTRACT

This article compares two distribution models that involve experiential logistics: pick-your-own farms, where consumers pick their own fruit and vegetables, and large retail stores with traditional self-service selling. Many stores attempt to dramatise low prices by offering consumers infra-ordinary experiences; the pick-your-own model sheds light on this concept in an apparently offbeat way. Pick-your-own is an example of a strategy of nature staging, encouraging consumers to relive the experience of the hunter-gatherer by dramatising the products with their accompanying logistics. The authors stress that both the cases we investigate illustrate the same desire to develop experiential logistics, but from two opposing perspectives: one based on hedonism, the other on utilitarianism.

KEYWORDS:

• Consumer
• co-production
• experiential
• logistics
• pick-your-own

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Aurélien Rouquet

Aurélien Rouquet is Professor of Logistics and Supply Chain Management at NEOMA Business School (France) and researcher at the Centre de Recherche sur le Transport et la Logistique (CRET-LOG) of Aix-Marseille University. He holds an Engineering diploma from Ecole Centrale de Lille, an MSc in Logistics and Supply Chain Management from Cranfield University and a Ph.D. in Management Science from Aix-Marseille University. His research interests include consumer logistics, supply chain orchestration and logistics standardisation.

Gilles Paché

Gilles Paché is Professor of Retailing and Supply Chain Management at Aix-Marseille University (France). He has more than 350 publications in the forms of journal papers, books, edited books, edited proceedings, edited special issues, book chapters, conference papers and reports. He is Deputy Director of the Centre de Recherche sur le Transport et la Logistique (CRET-LOG) and Director of the University Press of Aix-Marseille. His major interests are network organisation, supply chain management and retail operations management.