Future and impact of backshoring—Some conclusions from 15 years of research on German practices

In this short comment, empirical evidence will be offered to some of the questions Fratocchi et al., 2014. J. Purchasing Supply Manage. 20(1), http://dx.doi.org/10.16/j.pursup.2014.01.004 have posed in their short conceptual paper in this issue. Dynamics of German backshoring activities over the past 15 years are described and differences in motivations between the main backshoring modes are depicted. Further implications for global value chains and local manufacturing modes are discussed and future research directions are proposed.