The Role of Logistics Infrastructure in Enhancing Supply Chain Performance: Evidence From Urban and Rural Regions

Abstract

This paper examines the role of logistics infrastructure in enhancing the supply chain performance by making a comparative study between the city and rural areas. The overall objective of the research is to evaluate the infrastructure logistics variations on the efficiency, resilience and overall supply chain performance in these two environments, in a qualitative research approach, by discussing secondary sources of literature such as scholarly articles, institutional reports and world logistics databases. A thematic analytical approach (Rodrigue, 2020; OECD, 2021) was used to identify patterns and correlations between the performance of infrastructure and indicators of the supply chain, such as the timeliness of delivery, cost efficiency, flexibility and resilience. In the results, there is a considerable gap between city and rural areas in the logistics infrastructure, and supply chain performance. The urban areas had scores of around 85-92% in most of the indicators, such as connectivity, availability of warehouses and digitalized logistics systems, whereas the rural areas had lower scores of 35-55%. The urban areas were much higher on the supply chain performance measures such as delivery timeliness (90%) and customer satisfaction (92%), as compared to the rural areas (60% and 62% respectively). Moreover, destinations with high logistics infrastructure were more resilient with the recovery rates of disruption up to 88% and 52% in destinations with weak infrastructure. The study is thus, it is concluded that, the performance and resilience of the supply chain is influenced by the key factor is Logistics Infrastructure. However, the infrastructural disparity between urban and rural areas is a serious challenge to the even economic development. The key to achieving better efficiency and competitiveness of the supply chain in all regions is bridging this gap with specific investments, digitalizing, and policy interventions.