IIFT International Business and Management Review Journal
issue front

Subir Mitra

First Published 6 Feb 2026. https://doi.org/10.1177/jiift.261417001
Article Information
Corresponding Author:

Subir Mitra, Indian Institute of Foreign Trade, GIFT City, Gandhinagar, Gujarat 382050, India.
Email: subirmitro@gmail.com

1Indian Institute of Foreign Trade, Gandhinagar, Gujarat, India

Creative Commons Non Commercial CC BY-NC: This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 License (http://www.creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/) which permits non-Commercial use, reproduction and distribution of the work without further permission provided the original work is attributed.

Abstract

The dairy supply chain encompasses a complex network of stakeholders, including milk producers, processors, distributors and retailers. Effective management of this supply chain is essential for ensuring the continuous supply of high-quality milk and milk products to consumers. Milk suppliers, as the primary source of milk, play a critical role in the dairy supply chain. Understanding and segmenting milk suppliers based on their milk-supplying behaviour can provide dairy organisations with valuable insights for optimising supply chain management strategies. It will also improve supplier relationships and enhance overall profitability. At present, all transactions of individual milk suppliers are digitally recorded immediately at the point of their supply on a daily basis, creating a massive database that can be used for dynamic data analysis by fast computing facilities available in information technology today. Recency frequency monetary (RFM) analysis is a powerful tool that can be used to segment milk suppliers based on their milk-supplying behaviour. Further, based upon the initial RFM analysis, machine learning-based algorithms may be utilised to give interesting insights into the supply patterns, which may be missed by normal statistical analysis. This article explores the benefits of RFM application for segmenting milk suppliers of a dairy organisation for managing the supply chain effectively with a real case example.

Keywords

Recency frequency monetary analysis


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