Impact of festival season on supply chain disruptions in Bangladesh: challenges and strategies

Purpose Festival seasons in Bangladesh generate predictable yet severe supply chain disruptions driven by demand surges, labour shortages and logistics congestion. While disruption research predominantly focuses on unexpected crises, recurrent culturally embedded disruptions remain underexplored. This study investigates how festival season pressures affect supply chain performance, modelling disruptions as a mediating mechanism and mitigation strategies as moderating capabilities. Design/methodology/approach A quantitative, cross-sectional survey collected data from 384 supply chain professionals across apparel, fast-moving consumer goods (FMCG), retail, logistics, and e-commerce sectors in Bangladesh. Construct validity was established through composite reliability (CR) and average variance extracted (AVE); discriminant validity via Fornell–Larcker and Heterotrait-monotrait (HTMT) criteria. Regression-based mediation and moderation analyses were conducted using PROCESS macro with 5,000 bootstrap samples. Findings Festival-season pressures are significantly associated with increased supply chain disruptions, which in turn negatively relate to performance. Consistent with full mediation, disruptions account for the pressure performance relationship. Mitigation strategies, demand forecasting, inventory buffering, supplier diversification and workforce planning are significantly associated with an attenuation of both the disruptive effect of festival pressures and disruptions’ negative relationship with performance. Practical implications Managers should adopt anticipatory, data-driven approaches including proactive inventory positioning and digital logistics integration. Policymakers should invest in infrastructure resilience and institutional capacity building. Originality/value This study advances institutional, resource dependence and dynamic capability theories by demonstrating that predictable, culturally embedded disruptions require anticipatory management capabilities in emerging economy contexts.