Evaluating the role of consumer and business confidence in petroleum consumption

Abstract

Although organisations actively invest in technologies designed to capture customer data, the ability to translate this data into insight that is reflective of concurrent supply chain dynamics can be a non-trivial exercise. We examine both domestic capabilities, and global drivers, of the petroleum supply chain and undertake two investigations: 1) at the macro-level, we use secondary-data to investigate predictive models for consumption of petrol and diesel, both of which are directly and indirectly influenced by various local and international factors; 2) at the micro-level, we administered a tailored-questionnaire at a petroleum company to investigate any missing link between their supply-chain and their customer demand-chain with regards to three aspects namely, people, process and technology, which were then analysed within the structural equation model framework. Overall, the study provides valuable insights for future research aimed at better integration of customer sentiment and supply chain data analytics for petroleum procurement and planning.