اجرای استراتژی هدایت بازار از طریق ارتباط با تأمین کنندگان جهانی

The global supplier network is becoming an increasingly important asset for many firms. If successfully managed, supplier relationships may support the firm's strategic orientation and become a sustainable advantage on the global market. A key question is thus how the firm can develop and maintain such relationships. The market-driving strategy has recently been advanced as a more pro-active type of market orientation that aims to reconfigure the supply chain, change the nature of competition and the values of the customers. We especially investigate how market-driving firms can develop their supplier relationships so that they actively support this strategy. We present a set of propositions that specify factors critical for the development of the market-driving firm's supplier relationships and develop a theoretical framework that specifies how these different factors interact in order to strengthen the market-driving orientation of a supplier relationship. The results are generated from an in-depth case study of IKEA's corporate supplier strategy and of supplier relationships in the Russian and Polish markets.

The firm's global supplier network is playing an increasingly important part in generating sustainable competitive advantages and as a support for the market positioning (Pagano, 2009, Trent and Monczka, 2003 and Wu et al., 2010). Product quality, innovativeness, reputation and brand image often depend on the reliability and commitment of the firm's supplier base. Consequently, suppliers should be made more aware of and supportive to the market strategy and the specific values that the focal firm attempts to offer to customers. A key question is thus how the firm can develop and maintain this kind of supplier relationship. While there may be some general factors, it is reasonable to assume that this will also depend on the type of market strategy and positioning the firm aims for. Market orientation has become a fundamental question in business. It was originally anchored to the broader theme of the marketing concept (Kohli and Jaworski, 1990, Narver and Slater, 1990 and Webster, 1988). A market oriented firm is one that is driven by downstream players, typically offering incremental adaptations and rarely any innovative or radically new products (Christensen and Bower, 1996 and Narver et al., 2004). In order to develop a long term sustainable competitive position, a market-driving orientation has been touted as a promising alternative (Carrillat et al., 2004, Ghauri et al., 2008, Harris and Cai, 2002, Hills and Sarin, 2003, Jaworski et al., 2000, Kumar et al., 2000 and Schindehutte et al., 2008). It suggests that firms can proactively address the market conditions, based upon an ability to develop unique internal business processes, shape the market structure, lead and influence customers, and offer completely new value propositions. The way that the market-driving strategy is characterized in the literature highlights external business relationships. Jaworski et al., 2000 and Harris and Cai, 2002 explicitly discuss supply chain reconfiguration and the relationships with suppliers. It is argued that the transformation rests on “de-integration” of the current value chain so that the relationships to different types of actors providing critical resources can be either “modified” or reconfigured for a unique strategic orientation (Jaworski et al., 2000). Such a proactive approach, aimed at strongly influencing the structure of the supply chain in order to generate value for downstream relationships, can be achieved by means of establishing effective network structures (Ghauri et al., 2005 and Håkansson and Snehota, 1995). However, while earlier studies thus suggest that the market-driving strategy requires support from suppliers, we know less about how this can be achieved. Tuominen, Rajala, and Möller (2004) show how a firm's business relationships and market orientation activities are linked more generally. Considering that the market-driving strategy aims at restructuring the environment and influencing the minds of market players, gaining the support from suppliers may be quite a demanding and complex task. Even though the supply chain management (SCM) function has been increasingly stressed as strategically important for global firms, there is a need for an additional understanding of how a focal firm can interact with individual suppliers in achieving this (Andersen and Christensen, 2005 and Fernie et al., 2010). We aim to identify critical factors that explain how market-driving firms can develop their global supplier relationships in order for them to become a support for this strategy. We position our work primarily within the industrial network literature (Axelsson and Easton, 1992, Ford and Mouzas, 2010, Ghauri et al., 2005 and Håkansson and Snehota, 1995). While anchored in a network perspective, however, our main focus is thus on the individual relationship level and on how it can be proactively managed in order to become a part of the firm's global market-driving supplier network. One contribution will thus be that we present a set of propositions that specify factors expected to be critical for the development of the market-driving firm's supplier relationships. These propositions can be a basis for further empirical work and hypothesis testing. Additionally, we develop a theoretical framework that specifies how these different factors interact in order to strengthen the market-driving orientation of the supplier relationships. By this approach, we also extend the concept of a market-driving strategy from a single focal firm to the relationship between the firm and its suppliers, thereby broadening the research domain in which the strategy has been examined. From a managerial point of view, our research will provide insights into how specific practices related to the management of global supplier relationships can support a market-driving strategy. Based on the network perspective, the proposed framework is grounded on a three-tier model – the actors, activities, and resources – well established and developed through earlier research (Anderson et al., 1994, Elg et al., 2008 and Håkansson and Johanson, 1992). We show how these dimensions all contribute to a market-driving orientation within supplier relationships. The model and the critical factors are based on a qualitative, in-depth study of IKEA that includes the firm's overall supplier strategy as well as activities in the Polish and Russian markets and particular investigation of five supplier relationships.

This study has identified critical factors within the actor, resource and activity dimensions that influence the suppliers' support for a firm's market driving strategy. Below we will further elaborate upon the interplay between the three dimensions, the specific nature of the potential support generated from the supplier base and some implications of our findings for managers.