As a customer facing interface, customer-centric marketing orientation has gained prominence among academicians and practitioners, however, the success of a business transaction equally hinges on back office function, i.e., Supply Chain Management (SCM). Several businesses operated these functions as two different silos which ultimately hindered their overall business performance. This calls for an integrative thinking which combines the two (marketing and SCM) to constitute a synergistic concept, i.e., Demand Chain Management (DCM). Several researches so far conceptualized and empirically examined the issues related to marketing and SCM separately, and DCM, however, still remained a fancy idea to play with. Hence, in this paper, the authors explore the conceptual foundations of DCM in general. The paper elucidates the key concepts associated with demand chain management, followed by real-time cases of two apparel retailers, i.e., Shoppers Stop and Zara. The cases discuss the success stories of the two retailers, made possible by the effective execution of DCM. The study comprises the use of both interpretive paradigm and constructivist epistemology.

Rapid technological innovation, especially in information and communication technologies, has transformed the world market. All these have proved to be the impetus to the corporate honchos to perform in highly competitive environment. The recent changes have had a significant impact upon customary ways of understanding business and managing competition. Traditional business approach has evolved from product-led marketing philosophy to ‘customer centricity’; however, it still remained a challenge for marketers to find a way forward to attain such orientation.

Thus, the present market scenario of high market turbulence is like a hundred-meterrace where the one-point agenda is to ‘be leaner and faster than others’. In the race to be more competitive, firms need to enhance their market responsiveness capabilities. For this purpose, the area that is increasingly coming under focus is that of value chain management and its subsets—supply and demand chain management (Figure 1). Supply and demand chain management should be used proactively to enhance market responsiveness (Mohan and Deshmukh, 2013).

Supply Chain Management Journal, Demand Chain Management, The Marketing, Supply Chain Interface, Supply Chain Management (SCM), Demand Chain Management (DCM).