In terms of the sourcing activity, the posted information
usually indicates the expected length of time that it will
take to prepare an item for shipment to the customer or, if
the item is out of stock, the expected length of time that it will take to obtain the item for shipment (Smith and
Brynjolfsson, 2001). This information addresses what
Mentzer et al. (1989) refer to as the availability dimension.
Thus, following work on electronic commerce (Rabinovich
and Bailey, 2004) we use the label promised availability to
refer to the inverted measure of the expected length of
time that it will take to release items in inventory
following customer orders.