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1. Introduction
Economic deregulation in India since early 1990s has forced Indian business to compete in domestic as well as global markets. Such a business environment is bringing major changes in corporate structure and management culture ([1] Aggarwal, 2009). The implications of new management culture forces business organizations in India to introduce new approaches such as total quality management (TQM), just in time (JIT), business process reengineering (BPR) and supply chain management (SCM) to enhance their performance and gain competitive advantage ([33] Saad and Patel, 2006). In terms of SCM, many Indian organizations have evolved their supply chain strategies and are now in the phase of implementing them ([38] Sahay et al. , 2003). Same authors also stated that Indian markets are very peculiar and this influences supply chain strategy (SCS), design, planning, initiatives, and management. [36] Sahay and Mohan (2003) highlighted distinct characteristics of Indian economic environment, that act as major barrier for economic development, like lack of competitiveness and inadequacy of basic inputs normally required to support organized economic activity. Such issues of insufficiency on the part of Indian supply chains has lead to several research attempts in various sectors like automobile ([33] Saad and Patel, 2006; [24] Kapoor and Ellinger, 2004; [17] Govindan and Kannan, 2010), jewelry ([23] Kannabiran and Saumen Bhaumik, 2005), process ([43] Seth et al. , 2008; [42] Sehgal et al. , 2006), logistics ([37] Sahay and Mohan, 2006), agriculture ([34] Sachan et al. , 2005), etc. While some studies also focused on issues of cold supply chain ([22] Joshi et al. , 2009), SME's ([46] Thakkar et al. , 2009), sourcing ([40] Sawhney and Sumukadas, 2005) in Indian industry. [36] Sahay and Mohan (2003) indicated that more and more Indian organizations today are realizing the importance of developing and implementing a comprehensive SCS and then linking this strategy to the overall business goals. The business goals of a company are in fact formulated on the basis of requirements of different customer segments. In turn a firm's competitive strategy will be laid down on the basis of its customer priorities only. A company's competitive strategy defines, relative to its competitors, the set of customer needs that it seeks to satisfy through its products and services ([9] Chopra et al.