Integrated Model for Soft Drink Industry Supply Chain Risk Assessment: Implications for Sustainability in Emerging Economies

Recently, the soft drink industry has been confronted with a rapidly changing business climate and increased competition, creating risks and uncertainties in its supply chain. Thus, immediate actions are required to handle these risks and uncertainties. The purpose of this paper is to identify and classify these risks in the soft drink supply chain and to develop a methodology comprising a fuzzy analytical hierarchy process (FAHP) and fuzzy comprehensive evaluation of these risks. FAHP was used to determine the weights of five major risk categories and 23 sub risks under these major categories. Afterward, a fuzzy comprehensive evaluation method (FCEM) was applied for the assessment of overall risk level, risk levels of the five major categories and relative risk levels of the 23 sub risks. This research has been conducted focusing on the soft drink industry of Bangladesh, a developing country with an emerging economy. In the existing literature, this work contributes by identifying and evaluating risks in the soft drink supply chain in the context of Bangladesh. The outcome of this study indicates that the overall risk level in the supply chain of the soft drink industry is between low and medium, and the risk level of the demand risks is the highest whereas the risk level of infrastructural risks is the lowest. It was also found that loss of reputation and brand image is the most significant sub risk, and natural disasters are the least significant sub risk.