SCDigest recently released a new benchmark report on the state of supply chain relationships between retailers and their suppliers - and it is a fine piece of work, if we do say so ourselves. The report, based on detailed survey results from 50 retailers and more than 200 manufacturers, is available here: The State of Retailer-Vendor Supply Chain Relationships 2016.

Of course, it would impossible to really look at this important subject without examining the issue of retail chargebacks to their vendors for failure to meet compliance requirements, whether those "violations" are for late deliveries, mis-labeled goods, or anything in-between.

After asking both retailers and manufacturers some questions about the current state of chargeabacks, we then asked both sides of the relationship how they thought chargebacks would play out over the next five years, the results of which are shown in the graphic below.

As can be seen, 52% of vendors believe that the level of chargebacks will grow over that period, versus just 33% of retailers that see things that way.

Meanwhile, a solid 44% of retailers actually believe the level of chargebacks will decline over those 5 years, versus just 13% of vendors. Here, we clearly have two very different perspectives.

SCDigest believes it is probably something like this: retailers believe a combination process improvement and the pain of the chargebacks will eventually lead vendors to reduce their compliance violations. Vendors, on the
other hand, believe retailers will get more aggressive in this area, and find new ways to trigger deductions.

What would be your prediction? It is at the heart of whether retail-vendor relationships will actually become more collaborative in the future - or tread water instead.

This data point is just a smidgen of the great content in this new report - we encourage you to take a look at the highly graphical, easy to read study, which again you will find here: The State of Retailer-Vendor Supply Chain Relationships 2016.