2.1. Market sensitiveness (MS)
The most important characteristic that makes a supply chain agile in nature is market sensitiveness (Christopher,
2000). By market sensitive it is meant that the supply chain is capable of reading and responding to real demand (Christopher& Towill, 2001). The market sensitiveness of a supply chain is affected by level of collaboration among its trading partners, and its ability of using IT tools. Collaboration improves trust among trading partners, which motivates them to share busi- ness information and to work on the same data (Agarwal & Shankar, 2002a).