Buyer-Supplier Relationships: Factors Characterising Successful Collaborations

Abstract: With global competition intensifying, firms are increasingly recognising that internal efficiency improvements are insufficient, and that larger gains can be achieved by enhancing the performance of the entire supply chain. This realisation, together with the potential of leveraging supplier capabilities, has resulted in a trend where customers increasingly are entering into closer collaborations with suppliers. Previous research on the antecedents of successful buyer-supplier relationships has primarily adopted a buyer’s perspective, while limited research has taken a supplier’s perspective. To breach this gap in literature this study adopts a dyadic perspective, where both the viewpoint of the buyer and the supplier is considered. Hence, the aim of the thesis is to identify the factors that characterise mutually beneficial buyer-supplier relationships, as well as to investigate whether the factors are interdependent, and whether a particular factor triggers a closer collaboration. To study these issues a case study has been conducted where a Swedish manufacturing company and its relationships to five strategically important suppliers have been analysed through interviews, surveys, as well as observations. The findings are that factors within the dimensions of economic performance, interaction, and emotion and feeling, are important characteristics of successful buyer-supplier relationships. Moreover, we find that the factors are highly interdependent, and that it is interaction, mainly in the form of increased communication, that triggers the establishment of a closer collaboration. For managers, the implications of these findings are that collaborative relationships are resource intensive, and thus firms must carefully select with which suppliers such relationships are most beneficial.