پاسخ یک شرکت به عرضه کنندگان دچار کمبود و مزیت رقابتی

Supplier development involves the customer firm's support of a deficient supplier in a channel. This research examines the relationship between supplier development, improvements and the support of the customer firm's competitive strategy with the resource-based view and the relational view as theoretical explanatory perspectives. The results show that appropriate supplier development activities are powerful to substantially back up the customer firm's differentiation as well as cost leadership strategy. Supplier development activities focusing on supplier relationship improvement demonstrate to have a strong impact on both generic competitive strategies. Furthermore, this research questions the benefits from direct supplier development measures. Supplier development in channel research is a widely neglected interfirm relationship management practice, and should therefore receive more attention from practice and research.

Firms in most industries more and more focus on their core competencies and outsource products and activities that were previously considered integral to the firm. Several studies have reported that the materials purchased from suppliers account for up to 60% or even 70% of the budget (Chapman et al., 1997 and Heberling et al., 1992). As a result, in order to identify and realize significant cost savings or added customer value, firms have to work through suppliers and can no longer limit such efforts to their firm boundaries. They increasingly rely on their suppliers' contributions to accomplish strategic ends and create competitive advantage. Business marketing and marketing channel research extensively explores how competent suppliers and the management of relationships with such suppliers can boost the buying firm's performance and can contribute to the accomplishment of strategic goals and the creation of competitive advantage. Most research in this area addresses factors and antecedents of buyer–supplier relationships, such as cooperative norms (Anderson and Narus, 1990 and Heide and John, 1992), trust and commitment (Anderson and Weitz, 1992 and Doney and Cannon, 1997), information exchange and communication (Mohr and Nevin, 1990 and Mohr and Sohi, 1995) or dependence and safeguarding of relationship-specific investments (Buvik and Reve, 2001 and Heide and John, 1988). Furthermore, there are quite a few investigations concerning the outcomes of buyer–supplier relationship characteristics and collaborative processes (i.e., collaborative product development) on key performance outcomes of the firm (Jap, 1999, Johnson, 1999 and Noordewier et al., 1990) and the supplier (Kalwani and Narayandas, 1995 and LaBahn and Krapfel, 1999). However, very little is known about the impact of firms' supplier development efforts. While the facilitating conditions for performance improvements and contributions to competitive advantage through the collaboration with capable suppliers has been studied, no one has asked the ensuing question: How does the development of deficient suppliers support firms in the creation of competitive advantage? Motivated by this question, the objective of this study is to contribute to the business marketing and supply chain management literature by providing new insights about the effect of supplier development practices on (1) the supplier's product and delivery performance, (2) the buyer–supplier relationship, and (3) the customer firm's competitive advantage. Specifically, this research is intended to find out whether supplier development is a fruitful approach to follow, and how supplier development should be carried out to support a company's competitive strategy. To achieve this objective, this article reviews pertinent literature in Section 2. Section 3 draws on supplier development, supplier relationship management and marketing strategy research as foundations for the proposed conceptual model. Section 3 develops hypotheses regarding the effect of supplier development practices on the suppliers' product and delivery performance and supplier relationships, as well as their effect on the customer firms' competitive advantage. Section 4 describes the empirical study that I conducted to test these effects. Section 5 presents the results of the data analysis. The article concludes with a discussion of the results and managerial implications.

The goal of the current study was to investigate if and how the development of deficient suppliers can contribute to the achievement of competitive advantage for the customer firm. The results substantiate that supplier development can support the customer firm's differentiation and/or cost leadership strategy, i.e., contribute to competitive advantage. Fundamentally, the two types of supplier development (direct vs. indirect) have distinct effects on product and delivery performance improvement and supplier relationship improvement. More specifically, the results suggest support for the positive effect of indirect supplier development on product and delivery performance improvements and the positive effect of indirect supplier development on supplier relationship improvement (Prahinski and Benton, 2004). However, contrary to expectations, direct supplier development activities neither result in an upgrade of the supplier's product and delivery performance nor the buyer–supplier relationship. With respect to the impact of supplier development on the attainment of the customer firm's competitive strategy, the results reveal on the one hand that improved buyer–supplier relationships can be a powerful support for both strategies (considering the large standardized parameter estimates of 0.46 and 0.48). Supplier development activities are a potent source for competitive advantage stemming from the inter-organizational collective learning that occurs. Overall and consistent with the relational view of the firm (Dyer and Singh, 1998 and Johnson, 1999), the results emphasize the vital role of supplier relationship improvements, that is, the long-term focused upgrading of processes and routines on the buyer–supplier interface (Hartley and Jones, 1997). The results show on the other hand, that improved product and delivery performance does back up neither a cost leadership nor a differentiation strategy. As a consequence, looked at from a broader perspective, the products and services sourced from external suppliers are in itself not a sufficiently “valuable” resource that can be bundled into unique strategies (Penrose, 1959) to support the customer firm's competitive strategy. Overall, firms can achieve competitive advantage from a superior management of the buyer–supplier relationship and not from receiving products or services at the buyer–supplier interface.